


The Orphan Boy

by bendingwind



Series: A Broken World [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Angst, Forced Marriage, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Past Relationship - Steve Rogers/Phil Coulson, Ridiculous Romance Novel Ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:25:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 31,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint comes of age.</p><p>He's an orphan with no prospects outside of the factory dormitories, so when he's partnered with a plain old widower who pushes paper for a living, he takes the opportunity to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNINGS ARE SPOILERY AND CAN BE FOUND IN THE END NOTES.** Incidentally, you should also not read those if you don't want to be spoiled.
> 
> It should also be noted that this is all sabinelagrande's fault for encouraging me to overdose on ridiculous, over-the-top romance novels.
> 
> Many thanks to [tsukinobun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobun), [raiining](http://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining) and [shadowen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen) for beta-reading/readthrough/encouragement.

The afternoon of his eighteenth birthday found Clint Barton sitting on a cold plastic bench outside the mother superior’s office, waiting to be called in. His prospects as an orphaned omega, now legally obliged to enter the world, were not that great. He wasn’t dumb enough to think otherwise--plenty of supply, after all, and not enough demand.

At this point, as long as he could stay out of the fucking factory dormitories, a.k.a. the Virgin Prisons, Clint could make the best of just about _anything_.

Best case scenario, he was about to be partnered with some dried-up old alpha who had only just saved up enough to afford to pay the fees for an orphan omega.

“Barton, Clint,” the secretary called out. She offered Clint a familiar, conspiring smile as she led him through to the mother superior. They knew each other pretty well; after all, Clint spend enough time here waiting to be lectured on his behavior.

She opened the office door and motioned Clint through. The mother superior was seated behind her desk, as carefully coiffed as ever.

“Clint,” she greeted with a smile, and motioned for him to sit. He pulled the chair out, carefully arrayed himself in his most artful slouch, and tried not to fidget. He hoped the mother superior couldn’t tell how nervous he was, how scared. Things were, in Clint’s experience, easier to face if no one knew how scared you were.

The way the mother superior reached across the table to wrap one of Clint’s hands in her own dry, papery grip was a pretty good indicator that she knew exactly how Clint felt.

“You know how hard it is to partner omegas, with the population problems,” she said, gently and with a deeply sympathetic look. “Especially orphans with sketchy backgrounds.” She squeezed his hand. “The new laws relegate betas to mating within their own groups or living lives of chastity--” a quick, self-depreciating smile, “--and there aren’t enough alphas to go around anymore.”

Clint sighed and shifted back in his chair, pulling his hand free of hers. Virgin Prisons it was.

“I found you someone, Clint,” the mother superior said, her smile widening. Clint sat up straight, instantly hopeful.

“What, really?” he asked. And then, because it was a good idea to be suspicious of good luck in his experience, “Who?”

The mother superior slid a minal folder across the desk to him.

“He’s older, thirty-five, but it could be worse. He seemed very... kind. Polite. He’ll be good to you.”

Clint flipped open the folder. There was a picture on top, of a plain man with an utterly ordinary face and mousy brown hair that was just beginning to recede.

The mother superior sighed, and Clint braced himself for the downside.

“He’s a widower.”

Clint hissed a little and dropped the folder.

“ _Seriously?_ ” he asked. An old man would have sucked. A widower was _so much worse_.

“It’s better than the factory dormitories, Clint,” she said, not unkindly. “You’ll be taken care of. You’ll have a life and children and a _future_.”

“Yeah, and without the bond hormones or the knot, I’ll have to go through full heat every month for the rest of my life unless I’m bloated up with a kid, and _my entire life will be miserable_. No thanks.”

The mother superior’s expression turned more serious, and a little sad. Clint had always suspected that, no matter how much time he spent in her office being scolded and how much trouble he had caused her over the years, she favored him.

Now he was sure, and the thought made his heart ache.

Very slowly, as if explaining to a small child, she said, “If you go to the factory dormitories, you’ll have maybe a year or two of exactly those miserable, unfulfilled heats, and then you’ll have an accident or sucumb to the chemicals they use or give in to evil temptations and end your own life, as so many have.”

She paused, took a deep breath, and continued in a harsh voice, “Don’t be stupid, Clint. I’ve found someone willing to take you, and three miserable days out of a month for the next few decades is better than three miserable days for a handful of miserable months until your death. You’re not ignorant enough to believe the factory dormitories are anything but population control, as the government tries to force things back to the way they were before the plague.”

Clint winced, and then sighed. He ought to be used to harsh truths by this point in his life.

And... this was exactly what he had hoped for. Not anything great, not a fairytale by any means, but--a shot. A chance to make it.

The mother superior sat back, huffed out a sigh of her own, and then very gently added: “It’s not a bad life, Clint. To be honest, it’s the best life you could have hoped for under the circumstances.”

Clint hated that she was right, that she was echoing his own thoughts. He didn’t bother to answer her.

The mother superior pushed the folder towards him again, and folded her hands neatly over one another.

“I had Ms. Miller put some pamphlets in there as well, detailing the expectations a second partner might have of his alpha. I know you’re hardly an innocent, Clint, but they might be worth a look. There’s a lot of information about what you can expect from a relationship without a bond, and how to act around your alpha. I know you’re headstrong, but Clint--don’t ruin this for yourself.”

Feeling a little numb, Clint nodded. A lifetime of being unbonded, with someone but not entirely, of maybe having a children and making a life and never, ever quite being good enough.

So more of the same, basically.

The mother superior was right. It was still better than a life in the fucking Virgin Prisons.

“Thank you, Mother Superior,” he said, trying his hardest to sound properly grateful. He imagined that she must have pulled a lot of strings to get this for him, to make sure he would be almost happy and well taken care of. Gratitude welled up and threatened to choke him.

“Thank you,” he said again, more sincere this time.

She must have understood what he didn’t say, because she offered him another smile, distinctly teary this time, and reached across her desk to pat his hand one last time.

“Good luck, Clint. Come and see me sometime.”

Clint offered her the best smile he could under the circumstances, knowing it was too tight and too cold, and walked out of her door one last time. He was kind of going to miss being called in to be scolded over all the shit he pulled.

Ms. Miller greeted him as he came out.

“He’s coming to pick you up after he gets off work,” she said, cheerfully, “I’m so glad that Mother Superior found this for you, you’re so lucky! Here, just wait in one of the chairs by the entrance, he knows to come in and get you when he gets here.”

“But--” Clint said. Emancipated orphans were usually allowed one last afternoon in their dormitories.

Ms. Miller’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Normally, we’d let you back into the dormitories, but the mother superior seemed convinced you’d try to stir up one last round of trouble.”

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “We’ll miss you. Good luck.”

“Yeah,” Clint mumbled, looking at his feet.

“Come back and visit,” she said, echoing the mother superior’s invitation. Clint nodded, and watched for the few seconds it took her to vanished around a turn in the hallway before he sat down.

He glanced up at the clock across the hall. He didn’t know exactly when he could expect the dude, but he figured something like six, six-thirty was pretty reasonable. He prepared himself for a couple of hours of waiting and flipped over the folder. There was the picture of his partner-to-be, and then a short sheet with information about Mr. Philip Coulson. Thirty-five years old. Accountant. Widower--Clint sighed--no children. No pets. There was even a small personal section, detailing that Mr. Coulson occasionally left town for business, enjoyed gardening and running and was allergic to cats but would not mind a dog if his partner wanted one. He liked children, but did not intend to have more than the two mandated by law, which made Clint sigh again, this time with relief.

There was nothing about his first partner, or what had happened to them to leave Mr. Coulson with a broken bond at the age of thirty-five.

As a general rule, Clint did not daydream. His life was anything but rainbows and lucky four-leaf-clovers (see: having the luck to be partnered, but only to a widower) and he’d learned pretty early on that hope just made things that much worse. Nonetheless, he found himself leaning back against the hard plastic chair and thinking about Mr. Coulson. The mother superior had said that he had seemed kind; Clint wasn’t so sure, if he was looking in a dumpy omega orphanage for a second partner. Even though he was widowed, there were more than enough omegas from good families out there that couldn’t afford to be picky. That he had come here, looking for an omega who would only have a choice between him and a slow death in the factory dormitories, did not seem especially promising to Clint.

He supposed he could always run away again if it was too terrible. It was awfully difficult to find someone hiding away in a circus, after all.

After a while, he ran out of even the especially creative scenarios he could dream up for why Mr. Coulson was doing what he was doing. He brushed through the pamphlets--more of the same, bonds were one-time events, and without one Clint’s new partner would be unable to knot him or release the appropriate hormones necessary to calm Clint’s heats--pregnancy was possible, and not even much less likely to occur in any given round of intercourse--bonds were just hormones, and love was possible even outside of them--but an unbonded omega would not have some of the immunities of a bonded one, and should be careful to perform extra duties for their alpha at every opportunity--and finally six rolled around. Just when Clint was about to give up and start fashioning a tiny bow out of the paper, a sleek black SUV pulled up in front of the orphanage. Clint had a moment to think that it was kind of a strange car for a boring old accountant before the door opened and Mr. Coulson stepped in. He locked the car door behind him and walked into the orphanage with a stride that was confident without being especially pronounced.

He looked very much as he had in his picture, and Clint just barely remembered to stand in time.

Mr. Coulson stopped as soon as he spotted Clint. His gaze flicked up Clint’s form, taking him in, before he settled on Clint’s face. For a moment, so quick that Clint barely caught it, he looked truly sad. Then his lips quirked up in a small approximation of a polite smile.

It didn’t reach his eyes at all.

“You must be Clint,” he said.

“Yeah. I mean, yes, Mr. Coulson. Clint Barton.” Clint wiped his hands, suddenly sweaty, against his worn old jeans. If he was gonna do this, he wasn’t gonna fuck it up. Mr. Coulson nodded, seemingly satisfied.

“Come on, we’ll go get dinner and talk. Then, if you’re still interested in my offer, we’ll stop by the registry to sign the paperwork. It should all be in order already. And you should probably call me Phil,” he added, tilting his head at Clint invitingly.

Clint nodded nervously and followed him out to his car, trying to ignore the way everything suddenly felt too sharp and threatening and bright outside the safety of the orphanage.


	2. Chapter 2

“Did you read the file they gave you?” Mr. Coulson--Phil--asked, once the hostess had seated them in a booth near the back of a small diner. 

“Um, yeah, yes,” Clint said, biting his lip.

“And you’re wondering why I went to an orphanage looking for a new partner.”

Clint shrugged, and quickly thought better of it. “Yes,” he answered, trying very hard to find someplace to look besides Phil. Everyone said alphas didn’t like it when their omegas looked directly at them. Clint was gonna fuck this up sooner or later, but he needed it to be later, after they had a kid and the partnership was permanent.

Phil’s lips twitched again, in what might have been an aborted chuckle. Clint immediately realized his mistake.

“I mean, sorry, it’s none of my business,” he added, quickly.

“We’re going to sign paperwork in the next couple of hours that will make it your business, if all goes according to plan,” Phil pointed out, sounding... almost amused? Clint wasn’t sure.

Clint should have apologized again. He should have insisted that it wasn’t his business unless Phil said it was, made it clear that he was a nice, quiet little omega who wouldn’t be too bothersome.

Instead he asked, “Then why _did_ you pick me? The country isn't so flush with alphas that you couldn’t find someone on your own, even if--”

Clint cut himself off before he could do _too_ much damage, at least.

Phil sat up a little straighter and folded his hands together.

“Um, ya’ll ready to order?” a waitress asked, before he could say anything.

Phil looked at Clint. A little hesitantly, Clint said, “I’d like a burger please, no mayo. With, um, fries?”

Belatedly, he looked at Phil for confirmation. Phil definitely looked amused now.

“For me as well,” Phil said, “with two ice waters, please.”

The waitress nodded and left, and Phil turned to Clint once again.

“Clint,” he began, “I’m... I loved my first partner very much. We were bonded, of course, but it was a love match well before that. After... well, after, I wasn’t interested in pursuing anyone else. The only reason I am seeking a new partner at all is because of the Strict Enforcement Act. I am sure that you are aware that as an alpha, under the Repopulation Act, I am required by law to have two children in the hopes of one day correcting the orientation imbalance. You read in the file that my previous partner and I did not have any children. I was recently contacted and informed that I had a year to find a new partner, and two to produce at least one child.

“I’m not looking for romance. I don’t even... you’ll be free to do whatever you want. I don’t care how you spend your time or with whom, as long as I have two children I can genetically prove are my own within the next five years. And... I know it’s not much of a choice, between the factory dormitories and the life I can offer you. But you _can_ still say no, if this isn’t what you want.”

It wasn’t, but it was the closest Clint was likely to get.

Phil unfolded his hands and leaned back against the booth’s worn old vinyl cushions, just in time for the food to arrive.

Clint stared at him.

The waitress left again, and Phil carefully spread a paper napkin over his lap and began to eat. Clint continued to watch him as he ate his fries almost daintily, occasionally stopping to wipe a smear of ketchup from beside his mouth. After a couple of bites, Phil noticed.

“Eat,” he said. Clint ate, his mind whirling. He hadn’t really thought too much about kids beyond the fact that if he were partnered, he would probably have to have them someday. He remembered when the Repopulation Act had gone into effect with vague, hazy memories, but as the second of two children in a poor family unlikely to attract alpha suitors, it hadn’t seemed likely to affect him.

“I’d be a really fucking bad parent,” he blurted out, and immediately regretted it. God, what a way to convince Phil that he should follow through with the plan and not send Clint to the factory dormitories immediately.

Phil shrugged.

“So we’ll hire a nanny. If you like, we’ll find a pretty beta to keep you company while I’m out of town. I inherited quite a bit of family money, so finances... won’t be a problem. It’s not... it’s not a bad life I’m offering you, Clint. I know it’s not ideal--we can’t bond, for one--but it’s not bad.”

Clint frowned at him, trying to understand why he could possibly be doing this. It made sense, in a lot of ways--there was that sadness in Phil’s eyes, the way so many people with broken bonds never could quite find the will to start again--and... Phil was right, it wasn’t a bad life at all. It wasn’t the freedom of the circus or the undemanding safety of the orphanage, but it wasn’t a bad life.

“Okay,” Clint said, and Phil rewarded him with a tiny crinkle of his eyes that Clint realized, with a jolt, was his real smile.

“Finish your burger,” Phil said, and Clint did.

The hours after that, when Phil drove them to the registry and handed Clint a bunch of paperwork to sign and politely asked strangers on the street to serve as their witnesses, were a bit of a blur. By the time they pulled to a stop in Phil’s parking garage, Clint had lost most of his sense of what was real and what wasn’t. He followed Phil numbly from the car to the elevator, tried to stand as unobtrusively in the corner as possible while they rode up to Phil’s floor, and shadowed him as he walked down the hallway to the second apartment from the end, trying to steel himself for what was to come.

Everyone said that alphas couldn’t help themselves, even when an omega wasn’t in heat, and Clint had just married this particular alpha.

Phil unlocked the door with a quiet click, and Clint followed him inside.

“I have a kitchen, living room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spare room and an office. The last door in the hall and the one to its right are my bedroom and office, and I’d ask that you please stay out of those. Otherwise, you have the run of the apartment; you can choose whichever empty bedroom you want. You are, of course, welcome to any food you can find.

“I’ll get you a bus pass, debit card and a tablet tomorrow. I have a service that does the grocery shopping--I’ll program the number into your tablet so that you can request anything you want. A cleaning lady comes in on Wednesdays, but she won’t pick up anything you leave on the floor, so try to keep things tidy.”

Clint nodded, wondering how Phil was going to proceed if Clint wasn’t allowed in his bedroom and hadn’t picked one of his own yet.

Phil nodded, looking satisfied.

“Your days are yours to do what you please with,” he continued. “Now, I have some paperwork to do. I’ll be in my office, if you’ll excuse me.”

Clint stared at him.

“You’re not--?” he asked, a little helplessly, but once again managed to stop himself before he ran his mouth too far.

Phil’s eye-crinkle-smile was a little too amused and understanding this time.

“I’m not interested in that from you, Clint. Of course sexual intimacy will be necessary during your heats, but I won’t touch you otherwise, you have my word. And, of course, once our part of the law is filled, we won’t need to be intimate again. Especially,” Phil added, his lip curling up in a little moue of disgust, “as I will be able to do very little to provide relief from your heats regardless.”

Clint nodded, and stood still until Phil had banished down the hallway into what was, presumably, his office.

Clint checked the refrigerator and pantry first. They were well-stocked with the basics, and he’d spent more than his share of shifts working in the orphanage kitchens between regular duties and punishment shifts. He wouldn’t go hungry, and this would be one way, at least, to try and win Phil over in case things didn’t go according to plan. Clint was an _awesome_ cook. The cabinets were filled with generic kitchen appliances, mostly nicer than Clint was used to and covered with a thick layer of dust.

Beyond the kitchen was a living room with a comfortable-looking couch and a large screen. The cables to hook it up to a tablet dangled sadly off the side.

Clint moved to the hallway next, making a careful note of which two doors to avoid. The first door on the right led to a laundry room, and Clint wondered how that worked. Phil hadn’t mentioned hiring that out, and Clint wasn’t _great_ at laundry, but he knew the basics. He could probably manage well enough to keep Phil happy with him. The door next to it led to a small makeshift gym with a treadmill and a very basic set of weights. Across the hall from that was a bedroom with a smallish double bed covered in plain, navy blue bedding. There was even a dresser of light-colored wood, and matching blue curtains.

Next to that was a bathroom, small but much nicer than what Clint was used to, and then next to that a second room, this one empty. There were still dents in the carpet, a lot of them, but no trace of whatever furniture had once crowded the little room.

It seemed an unnecessarily large apartment for one person, even a single alpha. Clint considered the gym, the well-used look of the equipment and the slightly worn carpets, and wondered if this was the apartment Phil had lived in with his first partner. He wondered if they’d chosen it together, with its extra bedrooms and open living space, when they were looking to start a family.

The thought sent an unpleasant shiver up his spine.

There was a knock at the front door. Clint waited a full minute, until he was sure that Phil wasn’t coming out of his office, and then made his way back to the apartment’s front door. There was no one there when he opened it. He looked down and found a pair of familiar, worn boxes with smudged address labels.

He’d packed his stuff in those boxes the evening before.

Clint sighed and, after a quick glance in the direction of Phil’s office, stepped into the hallway. He kicked the boxes into the apartment, and then picked up one of them and carried it to the bedroom with an actual bed. He took some time unpacking, carefully placing his belongings so that everything would seem neat and organized if Phil chose to come and check up on him.

His picture of Barney received a place of honor atop the dresser.

By the time he finished, it was still only ten o’clock. Without a tablet or explicit permission to leave the apartment, Clint couldn’t think of a single thing to do. He set his beat up old alarm clock to wake him at five in the morning, so he could make sure not to miss his chance to start winning Phil over with breakfast, and he crawled under the covers.

As far as Clint knew, having kids wouldn’t be a problem. It was making Phil like him enough to keep him until that could happen that would be the trick. Clint tried hard not to think of empty beds in the factory dormitories, waiting for failures and fuckups like him to fill them.

It took a long, long time for Clint’s mind to slow down enough for him to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint hated waking up in unfamiliar places, which was how the alarm clock that had survived six rough years in the orphanage ended up shattered against the wall on his very first day with Phil.

He crawled out of bed, spent a few seconds inspecting the damage before giving it up as a lost cause, and retreated into the bathroom for a quick shower. After he was clean and dressed, he made his way to the kitchen. Eggs were easy enough to find, and all the vegetables he could want, but he was annoyed to find that the only bacon in the apartment was frozen.

Fortunately, there was some deli ham in the fridge, which would make for a perfectly passable omelette.

Not that orphans generally got to eat omelettes, but the mother superior had always had a soft spot for them, and Clint had always had plenty of reasons to stay on her good side. He made a _mean_ omelette.

Clint assembled everything and started coffee just in time to hear the muffled echo of a second alarm, presumably Phil’s, going off. He started coffee while he listened for the sound of the shower. As soon as the water turned off again, Clint started the omelette. His timing was pretty awesome, because he finished just as Phil walked out of his room. He was either wearing the suit from the day before, or he had another exactly like it.

Phil stopped dead as soon as he caught sight of Clint.

“Made you breakfast?” Clint offered, with an attempt at a sheepish smile. It had seemed like a less stupid idea the night before.

For just a moment, Phil looked furious, and then his expression smoothed out to something unreadable.

“Thank you, Clint,” he said, too politely, “but I don’t eat breakfast. Please don’t do this again.”

Clint nodded, a too-familiar emptiness filling him up. Not good enough.

No problem, Clint could do better. He was going to win Phil over, and he _wasn’t_ going to go to the factory dormitories, even if he didn’t have a bond to make it easy for him.

Phil picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

“Coffee, at least?” Clint offered, a little desperately. Phil paused for a second, contemplating, and then he nodded.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Clint hurried to fill one of the travel mugs he’d dug out of the cabinets with fresh coffee. He shot a questioning look at Phil, who responded, “Just black, please,” and then snapped the lid on and handed it over.

“Thank you,” Phil said, again. “I’ll be home around six.”

He left the apartment without a backward glance. Clint ate the omelettes and savored his ability to eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. It was a pretty good counterbalance to the gnawing worry that he wouldn’t ever be able to find a way to make Phil want to keep him.

Clint spent the day exploring more, not quite ready to risk venturing out of the apartment, especially without access to money or proof that he was partnered. He poked around the gym, regretting that he’d been too taken aback by Phil’s response to breakfast that morning to ask for permission to use it. He sat on the small wooden porch and watched birds. He made a sandwich for lunch, and decided to try packing one for Phil the next day and see how that went over.

He reorganized his room.

He explored the second room and found a crib, packed back into its battered box, on the top shelf of the closet. There were other boxes, things for a baby, that made Clint wince. He left quickly, closing the door behind him.

After some debate, he took all of the dusty appliances out of their cabinets, cleaned everything in the kitchen, and reorganized it more to his liking. He reasoned that Phil clearly didn’t make use of it very often, so he probably wouldn’t mind.

At five-thirty, he started dinner, a pretty basic spaghetti with meatsauce. It was weird and bizarrely pleasing not to have to thin everything out with vegetable oil, and it made everything taste _a lot_ better.

They key clicked in the lock at exactly six, just as Clint was arranging the food on the kitchen bar. Phil, for whatever reason, did not have a table. It was easily the only sign that this apartment had belonged to a bachelor for a long time now. Clint tried to look... whatever, useful, hard-working, keepable, as Phil let himself in.

“Hi,” Clint said, only it came out as more of a question than a greeting.

“I thought we could--oh, you made dinner,” Phil said, looking genuinely surprised.

“I’m useful for a couple of things,” Clint said, forcing a grin. God, he didn’t know what he would do if Phil changed his mind at this point. No one would believe he could still bond now that he’d spent the night, and Clint had heard all the horror stories about what happened to used omegas if their alphas turned them out. Phil set his briefcase down beside the door.

“Did you stay in the apartment all day?” Phil asked, looking around. His eyes fell on the dishes in the kitchen sink.

“Yes,” Clint answered, “I didn’t... I didn’t really have anywhere else I could go.” It seemed the answer least likely to get him in trouble, but then he fidgeted and added, in case Phil had noticed, “I reorganized the kitchen. It didn’t look like you used it much and it needed some cleaning...”

“Thank you,” Phil replied, sounding surprisingly grateful. “And I apologize for not stating this explicitly yesterday, but of course you have my permission to leave the apartment. I got you a card with access to my account today, a bus pass, and a tablet. I thought you could find some things to decorate your new room with.”

Phil sat down in one of the chairs beside the kitchen’s bar. Clint settled in beside him, relieved that the scene from that morning clearly wasn’t going to be repeated.

“This is really good,” Phil said, after a few bites. And then: “I saw you picked the bigger room?” Clint tried to slurp down his spaghetti as politely as possible before he answered.

“Um, yes. You said I could have either of them, and the other one didn’t have a bed...” Tactfully, Clint decided against mentioning the things for a child locked away in the closet to gather dust.

Phil’s face darkened again anyway, for just a moment, and then cleared.

“It’s fine. I thought you could move the bed to the other room if you wanted. It never had a bed in the first place and I never could quite justify buying another bed that would never get used.”

Clint figured that made sense that the second bedroom didn’t have a bed, given that it had been intended as a nursery. He also figured it was best not to tell Phil that he’d figured that particular detail out.

“Um, what did you mean about finding things to decorate my room with?” he asked, in a hurried attempt to change the topic back to safer things. Phil raised an eyebrow.

“I mean that after dinner I’ll give you the debit card I got for you, and you can go out and buy new stuff for your room. It’s pretty bare.”

Clint watched him, trying to judge how sincere he was.

“Is there a spending limit?” he asked, after a moment.

“Anything you want within reason,” Phil said, and Clint swore the man was rolling his eyes. “My contact information is already in the tablet I got for you--send me a message if you end up going over five hundred dollars, and we’ll re-evaluate. And _please_ replace the bedding. It’s on the verge of falling apart.”

For a moment, Clint considered. He really didn’t need much--he didn’t _have_ much, after all--but he wouldn’t mind new bedding and maybe a couple of posters and a lamp. Maybe a bedside table.

“Um, what about the room with the gym equipment?” Clint asked, even though he really knew better than to press his luck this way. “I mean, can I use it?”

“Yes, of course,” Phil said, and he looked... strangely sad, or maybe pitying.

“Thanks,” Clint said, and his smile felt genuine for the first time since he’d left the mother superior’s office the day before.

They finished their dinner to the quiet clink of silverware against plates. It was... nice, to eat without a dozen kids screaming around him.

Finally, Phil put down his fork. He shifted, and Clint looked up from his food to focus on him. He was almost... fidgeting.

He stood and retrieved his briefcase. He pulled a plain black wallet out, and flipped it open to show Clint the flimsy, temporary debit card, identification as Phil’s partner with permission to appear alone in public already listed on it, and a bus pass. He laid it on the counter, and then pulled out a tablet to set beside it.

“As promised,” Phil said, with a ghost of a smile. Something uncertain flickered over his face, and then he added, “I also... got you something. For your birthday, sort of.” He reached into the briefcase a third time, and pulled out a small velvet bag. He dumped its contents into his hand; it was a simple silver band, the kind that would identify Clint as a partnered omega and stop most people from demanding to see his identification.

A wedding band.

“I know it’s... easier with this,” Phil said, with another of his tiny, quick smiles.

For the first time, Phil met Clint’s eyes, and Clint realized that for all his plainness, Phil had gorgeous eyes.

Cautiously, Clint held out his hand. Phil dropped the ring into his palm, the light catching the gold band he wore around his own finger as he did so. He’d been wearing it the day before, Clint realized. It was probably his wedding band from his first partnership; his bondmate, whoever he or she had been, would have had one to match.

The deliberate choice of a silver band, in that context, stung more than Clint wanted to admit.

As Clint watched, Phil absently twisted his own ring. He wasn’t really being fair; after all, Phil had made it clear from the beginning exactly what this was. He hadn’t bought this ring to mark Clint as his, or to bind them together; he had purchased it to give Clint that extra bit of freedom.

“ _Thank you,_ ” Clint said, suddenly embarrassingly grateful. For the first time, it occurred to him that he might not have to win Phil over after all. Maybe they could be happy just like this, Phil giving Clint his freedom and Clint giving him the children that he needed to stay out of jail and occasionally doing housework and making meals.

“It wasn’t especially out of my way,” Phil said, deflecting his thanks with an amused ease that felt practiced. “Don’t get into trouble with any of it, alright?”

“I won’t cause you any problems,” Clint responded quickly, and he wouldn’t. Well, he probably would eventually, but he’d do his best not to. Phil had the potential to be pretty easy-going, but Clint was still not going to risk fucking this up.

“I have some work that I need to finish,” Phil said, quietly. “Don’t get up early on my account, I really don’t eat breakfast. I’ll see you tomorrow evening. And thank you for dinner.”

He took his briefcase and disappeared back into his office. 

Clint spent a few hours figuring out a setup for his very first non-library-owned, customizable tablet. There was a show he’d enjoyed when he’d watched it the month before, but the library had only had the first season on DVD. He queued up the entire six seasons that apparently followed, and watched the first couple of episodes before decided to go to sleep early again. Even if he couldn’t bribe Phil to keep him with breakfast, he could keep making coffee, and lunch deserved at least one attempt.

He set the alarm on his tablet, washed his face and brushed his teeth, and curled up in his bed. With Phil’s reassurances and gifts on his mind, sleep came far more quickly and peacefully than it had the night before.


	4. Chapter 4

Phil accepted the lunch Clint made for him the following morning, and thanked him for both that and the coffee. On the third day, when Phil urged him to _please_ leave the apartment before he wore a hole in the carpet with his pacing, Clint went out and bought a new bedspread in a bright shade of purple, some posters, and a second-hand bedside table that was a little wonky until he picked up some nails and a hammer from a hardware store, stacked up some of the cardboard from the boxes his belongings had been packed in, and nailed it to the short leg to even things out. All in all, Phil got a much-needed basic household tool-kit out of it, and it cost Clint less than a hundred fifty. He thought Phil looked pleased when he told him about it over baked mac and cheese that night.

The fourth evening, Phil gently suggested that Clint should consider some sort of hobby to occupy more of his time. Clint took him up on the offer and joined an archery club in the next neighborhood over. His days quickly settled into a pattern after that; wake up, make coffee and lunch for Phil, work out in the gym, shower, and head to the archery club for a couple of hours. He would come home, clean a little, and then make dinner in time for Phil to get back from work. After, he would queue up whatever he felt like watching on his tablet and enjoy someone else’s world for a few hours before he went to sleep.

At the end of his first week with Phil, Clint decided to explore a grocery store for the first time in his life. In practice, it wasn’t actually that different from the times he had placed the orphanage food orders when Sister Carter was out sick, except that now he got to touch and smell and occasionally taste the stuff he was getting. He watched the lady catch sight of the ring on his finger, and she let him use his debit card without demanding to see his identification.

He cancelled Phil’s grocery service as soon as he got home. Shopping was _the best_.

That evening Phil listened to him with a vague expression of tolerant amusement as he babbled on about his day over a particularly awesome roast. It was a Saturday; Phil had spent the entire day in his office. Before he disappeared back into it, Clint asked him to leave his laundry by the door in the morning so Clint could have everything washed.

Phil raised an eyebrow, but there was a hamper of dirty laundry in the laundry room when Clint woke up in the morning. The archery club was closed on Sundays, so Clint had more than enough time to run the suits to the dry cleaner’s and wash all of the other clothes. Phil left for several hours in the afternoon, and came back with a large box propped up on one shoulder. Clint was folding laundry in the living room while he watched _Dog Cops_.

He looked different out of his suits. His T-shirt showed off surprisingly toned arms--Clint shouldn’t have been so surprised, he _knew_ Phil spent about an hour in the gym every other night, he usually woke up when Phil walked down the hall--and a trim frame no one would ever have guessed he had, going by his plain face and poorly-fitted suits.

Phil put the package on the counter without comment, and sat down next to Clint. He reached past him and grabbed a shirt, which he began folding without comment.

Tense and not quite sure how to react, Clint carried on. Occasionally, Phil would chuckle at one of the jokes on the screen. They got through the laundry pretty quickly, and Clint was just starting to reach the point of panic over what he should say when the alarm on the oven rang, signaling that the biscuits he’d made to go with dinner were finished.

He jumped up. Phil followed him into the kitchen, looking interested.

He breathed out a happy little sound when Clint pulled the biscuits out of the oven, sending the smell of garlic and cheese curling through the apartment.

“May I?” Phil asked, but he didn’t wait for Clint’s answer before he reached out and grabbed.

“They need to--” Clint said, but Phil bit happily into the biscuit. Phil sighed happily around a mouthful of biscuit, heedless of the fact that Clint knew it must be _burning the fuck out of_ his mouth.

“You’re not a servant, you know,” Phil said, around his third bite of biscuit. “You don’t have to do all of this for me. I can manage my own laundry, and we can eat out from time to time.”

Clint considered for a long moment. The obvious answer would be that of course he did; he needed to be indispensable, so that Phil would never change his mind. He didn’t think that that was the answer Phil wanted to hear.

“I don’t mind,” he said, with a calculatedly casual shrug. “I need something to do all day.”

“The archery club doesn’t take up enough of your time?” Phil asked, with an amused twist of his lips.

Clint tensed, and fumbled with a biscuit in an attempt to disguise his sudden sense of terror.

“I--I can stop going if you don’t like it,” he said, very quickly.

“No, I think it’s good for you,” Phil said, smiling openly now. “But I have to ask; why archery?”

Clint watched him for a minute, trying to settle on a story to go with. He couldn’t think of anything that had even the slightest chance of ringing true; after all, where would an orphan have gotten a bow and arrows in a poor orphanage?

“Just a sec,” he finally said, and he slipped into his room. The old flyer was exactly where it was supposed to be, in the box where he kept all of his old, precious things from those times.

“Carson’s Carnival of Traveling Wonders: See the Amazing Hawkeye,” Phil read, after Clint returned to the kitchen and handed it to him. He sounded faintly disbelieving.

“That’s me, the Amazing Hawkeye,” Clint said, trying to smile winningly and look utterly innocent.

Phil lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I ran away to join the circus when I was seven,” Clint explained. “They had to turn me over when I hit puberty and started my heats, of course, but I had a good span of years with them. They were good people.”

Phil watched him for a minute, considering. Then he shook his head, a faint expression of disbelief still etched across his features, and stood to retrieve the cardboard box he’d picked up earlier.

“For you,” Phil said, watching him. Clint peeled the box open, curious, and pulled out a bow.

“It’s not top of the line or anything,” Phil explained quickly. “But... I doubt the club equipment is all that good. I thought it might be nice for you to have a bow of your own.”

Clint gaped at him. He couldn’t even quite bring himself to say thank you, he was so stupidly surprised and pleased and _grateful_.

The timer for the slow cooker beeped.

“Dinner’s ready,” he said, instead. Maybe Phil understood, or maybe he was just willing to let the matter drop, because he walked past Clint to pull down some plates. They ate the biscuits and chili quietly, but the silence was much more comfortable than awkward this time.

Another week passed, during which Clint tried out his new bow at the club and spent the better part of dinner that night extolling its virtues to Phil while Phil did his best not to look too bored, tried to make pizza from scratch and sort of succeeded, and finally caught up with _Dog Cops_ just in time for the season finale.

(That part actually kind of sucked.)

Saturday, Phil caught him as he was leaving the tiny home gym and Clint was going in.

“Clint?” he asked, reaching out to gingerly touch Clint’s arm. Clint tried not to be too distracted by the way Phil’s skin felt against his, the tingle Phil’s alpha hormones sent through his system.

“Yeah? Yes?” Clint asked. Phil’s lips quirked up.

“You can say ‘yeah’, you know. I don’t mind,” Phil said. His expression turned thoughtful again. “I’ve been meaning to ask: when is your heat? I need to request the time off.”

Clint swallowed harshly, and shifted out of Phil’s touch, suddenly nervous.

“Oh,” he said, in a very small voice. “I--it’s maybe ten, eleven days out? You don’t, please don’t go out of your way for me.”

“Clint,” Phil said, very seriously, “it would be necessary for me to take time off to get you through your heat even if we could bond. Without it--I probably won’t even be able to leave the apartment. You’ve had heats before, I’m sure you know what heat haze can be like.”

Clint looked down. Of course he did. Some of his most unpleasantly vivid memories were being tied down so that he wouldn’t hurt himself in his haze of lust and misery, of having food and water shoved into his mouth and his nose held and his throat massaged, roughly, to force him to swallow.

If he and Phil were bonded, the heat haze would break after each knotting, released by Phil’s hormones and the knot itself. He’d have minutes, even hours, to eat and drink and wash. His scent would make it possible for Phil to have a near-constant erection, ready to help Clint whenever he needed it.

Without any of that, Clint was going to spend three days hardly able to think of anything but fucking, body racked with cramps and nausea and headaches as it tried to force him to breed. Without being able to ever quite get what his body needed, Clint would be utterly miserable.

Yeah, Clint knew exactly what would happen.

“The most I’ll be able to do is trick your body into thinking it’s getting what it wants for a little while. The symptoms should disappear while we’re--well. But they’ll return as soon as I, um, finish, and it’ll take some time before I can be ready for another round.”

When it became clear that Clint wouldn’t answer, Phil carried on.

“You’ll get through it,” he said, sounding almost kind. After a moment, he moved closer again and reached up to press his hand against the top of Clint’s head, and then he stepped away.

“I’ll be in my office,” he said, and he walked away.

Clint went back to his room, and sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, breathing slowly through his nose. After a while, he queued up a show that sounded interesting, and tried to lose himself a little bit in the story. He didn’t want to think about heats, or fucking, or kids, even if Phil had kind eyes and incredible arms.

It didn’t work very well. Clint had been so caught up in his newfound freedom and being able to _buy_ things and not constantly feeling a little of the ache of hunger gnaw at his stomach that he had almost forgotten the price of this life.

It wasn’t that he would mind having a partner during his heats, even if that partner could only just barely take the edge off things. He wasn’t even particularly concerned about Phil seeing him like that, because clearly the omega heat haze hadn’t put Phil off his first partner.

_Kids_ , though...

Clint sighed and turned away from his tablet to bury his head in his pillow. It couldn’t be so bad, right? People had kids all the time. People _wanted_ kids, which to be fair, was the thing that had fucked everyone over in the first place.

At the very least, he thought, he would probably be a better parent than his mom and dad had managed.

He rolled over and pulled his comforter around him, taking comfort in the ridiculous, over-the-top purple color.

It was going to be okay. Clint would figure it out somehow. They had books on this sort of thing, and not being his parents was probably a good starting point. 

And... he liked the idea of Phil touching him, pressing into him, filling him and making something brand new in him...

Clint was only eighteen. He was too young to be a parent. Then, according to the rest of the world, he was too young to have left home, let alone to have led the life he had.

Clint wanted to be more upset, more scared, to voice more indignant protests at the unfairness of his life within his own head, but sleep rolled over him and when he woke, it was to the sound of his alarm quietly playing soothing music at him in an attempt to gently wake him up.

Clint hadn’t ever had the kind of life where he had the luxury of taking things gentle, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

Ten days later, Phil emerged from his room wearing sweats rather than the suit Clint had been expecting. It was a weekday, after all. Clint set down the sandwich he had been holding.

“Um?” he asked.

“I took five days off this time, so that I could figure out the best strategy to deal with your heats,” Phil said, matter-of-factly. “Today was the day you thought it should start. This way I should be able to observe it from the beginning to the end, and decide on which days it will be necessary for me to take off work and which days you can manage without me as long as I leave food and water where you can reach it.”

“I--” Clint began, because he knew exactly how his heats ran. Half a day of slow build, then a day and a half slammed with heat haze, and finally one last day where it slowly wore off.

“It’ll be different with a partner, even without the bond,” Phil interrupted, a little brusque. “Anyway, I’ll be in the gym if you need me. Let me know as soon as it begins, please.”

Clint meekly watched him go, and then walked through the living room and out onto the porch. 

He didn’t mention that the haze had started sometime in the night.

He made it until lunch before Phil sought him out on the porch. He saw the exact moment when Phil caught the scent, watched the way his nostrils flared the moment he opened the door to the porch, watched as Phil took in his flushed face and gasping breaths. The cramps had just started.

Phil stood there for a moment, frozen halfway out the door, and then he scowled, slipped a hand under Clint’s arm, and tugged him to his feet.

“Stupid,” Phil hissed, as he dragged Clint back into the apartment behind him and shut the door. He manhandled Clint into Clint’s bedroom and shoved him down on the purple comforter, which felt impossibly smooth and cool and plush against Clint’s feverish skin.

“Stay there,” Phil ordered. “I’m going to get us lunch. Can you wait until after we eat?”

Miserably, Clint nodded. A second round of cramps radiated out from his belly and he curled into a ball, trying to ignore the ache and the slick feeling between his legs. Phil returned a couple of minutes later with two glasses of milk and two sandwiches. He sat one of each down on the table beside Clint, and watched him eat with a slightly unnerving intensity.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Phil demanded, as soon as Clint had stopped eating.

“Didn’t want to bother you,” Clint said, not quite able to meet his eyes. He just... he’d wanted to pretend, for just a little longer, that nothing was going to change.

Phil scoffed, loudly, and then asked. “How bad is it? We’re both going to be very sore and very, very chafed by the time this is over, so I’d like to wait to... start... for as long as possible.”

“I--yeah, I can, I can wait. A bit,” Clint bit out. Phil leaned over and pressed a soothing hand against his back, and Clint shivered at the touch.

“Have you ever done this before?” Phil asked, something new and deep and wonderful in his voice. If Clint had had the biological ability, he was pretty sure he would have purred.

“No,” Clint gasped out, caught between the sensation of Phil’s touch and his sudden fear that Phil wouldn’t believe him, would find him wanting.

Phil’s touch shifted to his hip, and tightened into something more like a grip. Clint’s shirt rode up, just enough to expose his skin to Phil’s hand. The shock of Phil’s touch shot through him.

“Nothing? Not even someone’s fingers, someone’s tongue?”

“No,” Clint repeated, and this time it came out more of a moan as Phil’s hand traveled up his back, pulling his shirt with it. “Just, just me. And toys, when I could get them.”

Phil leaned over and huffed a quiet laugh against Clint’s neck, before pressing a kiss there.

He pulled away.

“Good to know,” he said, more clinically, Clint hadn’t realized that the cramps had stopped until they started again, worse than before.

“ _Please_ ,” he begged.

“I’ll make it good for you,” Phil promised, that dark velvety tone that made Clint shiver back in his voice. Phil slid Clint’s shirt over his head, and then his fingers slid beneath Clint’s waistband. Phil used the grip to maneuver Clint to his hands and knees, and Clint let him. The cramps faded once again. Clint tried to unbutton his jeans, but he could only use one hand in this position and his fingers seemed impossibly clumsy. Phil brushed his hand aside and did it for him.

“How come you’re so calm?” Clint panted, as Phil helped him sit up enough to pull his jeans down over his hips. Phil tossed them aside. Clint felt an inordinate amount of pride over his decision to skip putting boxers on when he’d awoken with the buzzing beneath his skin. “Shouldn’t you be going--going crazy from--my scent, or something?” he asked. Phil stripped off his own shirt, and then slipped out of his pants, watching Clint with dark eyes.

“I am,” he admitted, leaning down so that his body was pressed over Clint’s. He dropped a kiss against the skin behind Clint’s ear. His hands skimmed down Clint’s sides, down his hips, and lightly traced patterns against his thighs. Clint sighed with relief as the last tingest of the cramps faded, stretched, and spread his legs just a little farther apart. “I just have a little more experience and a little more restraint,” Phil mumbled against his skin. One of his fingers traveled up the curve of Clint’s ass to trace the edge of his hole.

“Mmmm,” Phil hummed.

Clint _keened_.

“I’m ready already, stop teasing me, oh my god,” Clint gasped, when he had come back to himself a little.

He couldn’t see Phil, but he could practically feel one of those tiny, impossibly sweet smiles cross Phil’s face, and he felt himself smile in return.

“No you’re not,” Phil said. “We’ll take it slow. As long as your body thinks you’re headed in the direction of mating, it won’t push you so hard.”

Phil leaned down again and pressed another kiss against the base of Clint’s neck, but this time he kept going, trailing kisses down Clint’s spine. He was moving oddly, messing with something just out of Clint’s range of vision.

“Lube,” he mumbled in between kisses when Clint made a questioning noise.

Just as his lips mit the dip at the base of Clint’s spine, he slid a finger inside, drawing a gasp from Clint.

It felt weird, and not entirely pleasant.

“Shhh, relax,” Phil said, and Clint tried to force himself to obey.

“Hurts,” he said, finally.

“I know,” Phil murmured. “It’ll get better.”

Phil pushed the finger further, and Clint grunted, just in time for Phil to do something that made him see stars.

“What--?” he asked. Phil chuckled, and did whatever it was again.

“ _God,_ ” Clint gasped, and Phil took the opportunity to slide another finger into him. It was easier, less uncomfortable, this time.

“So tight,” Phil said, almost absently, “so wet for it though, aren’t you?”

“God yes,” Clint said, and he wasn’t quite able to stop himself from pushing back against Phil’s fingers, wasn’t quite able to stop a moan from escaping as Phil pressed into him in just the right way again.

Phil added another finger. Clint could feel him now, the damp tip of Phil’s cock tapping against the back of Clint’s thigh. It was... strange, but not bad.

“Come _on_ Now,” Clint insisted. Phil pulled away, and Clint almost staggered under the weight of his cramps returning. He half-turned and watched as Phil poured more lubricant into his hand and reached down to wrap it around his cock, spreading the liquid all over it. The sound Phil made sent goosebumps rippling up Clint’s arms, and he let out another quiet keen.

And then Phil was looming over him, the hard tip of his cock pressing against the skin of Clint’s ass and then into him. The stretch of it burned, and for a moment Clint wanted to pull away, to say, stop, this hurts too much, and then Phil began to move. He pumped into Clint and reached around to wrap his warm, calloused hand around Clint’s cock. Clint whimpered and pressed back against him, crying out every time Phil managed to fill him just right, managed to send those sparks cascading through his body. It seemed like hours, days of perfect bliss before Phil grunted above him, quietly, and came. Clint didn’t quite have words to describe it, or how it felt, but he...

He was still hard, painfully so, and as Phil stopped shuddering above him and slowly pulled free, the cramps returned once again, the worst yet. Clint uttered an entirely different kind of whimper.

It was a while before Phil seemed to return to himself enough to notice. He tugged at Clint, maneuvered him onto his side, rubbed a warm hand across Clint’s belly. The cramps receeded, but only slightly.

“I’m so sorry,” Phil said, still a little breathless. “You knew I couldn’t... and you can’t, without it. I’m so sorry.” He cupped Clint’s cheek in his other hand, caressing the skin under Clint’s eye with his thumb. It left a smear of something warm and wet and Phil immediately pulled away, and this time Clint couldn’t quite stop the tears.

“Sorry, sorry,” Phil murmured, as he pressed kisses into Clint’s skin. “Sorry, sorry. Let me try to make things a little better.” He wrapped his lips around Clint’s cock, and the things he did made Clint arch away from the bed and cry and bed and made the cramps just a little bit better. Clint teetered on the edge of orgasm, felt it building, but every time he thought he would finally get some relief, he--just, didn’t.

Phil had come twice more by the evening, and Clint was sobbing with frustration, worse than anything he’d ever felt before.

Phil brought a damp cloth in and cleaned the both of them up, but it did absolutely nothing to ease Clint’s misery.

“Shhh, shhh,” Phil whispered, watching Clint with sorrow and pity and kindness mixed up in his beautiful, beautiful eyes. “I’m so sorry. If you--hopefully we won’t have to do this again in the near future.”

By midnight, Clint had to be tied down to stop him from hurting himself, sooner than normal. Phil mixed foreplay with food and drink, taking advantage of those times Clint was almost free from the pain and the haze. After he was finished, when the worst was striking Clint and he had no means by which to make Clint feel better, he took up the mantra “Sorry, sorry,” as if this was all his fault.

In his more lucid moments, Clint knew that if he weren’t doing this now, he’d be doing nearly the same thing on the hard bunk mattresses of a factory dormitory somewhere, without even the intermittent relief of Phil’s touch.

“It’s okay,” he tried to say, more than once, but it came out broken and slurred and probably unintelligible.

The second day was worse than the first, and by the evening Phil was wincing and occasionally whimpering in pain himself as he fucked Clint slowly, gingerly.

Clint couldn’t sleep until close to dawn of the third day. Phil had dozed off beside him, too exhausted to stay awake any longer, when Clint realized the haze was finally fading. It would take another day or so to get it out of his system, but...

He had no sooner smiled than his eyes closed and sleep swept him away.

Phil woke him three hours later when he got up to use the restroom.

“It’s wearing off?” Phil asked when he returned, sounding relieved.

“Yeah,” Clint said, offering him a bleary smile. Without thinking, he added, “Maybe one more go? In the hopes that we won’t have to go through this again next month?”

For a long moment, Phil watched him.

“No, I think we’re good,” he said. “I’ll leave you food and water; I have some things I really should give my attention. I’ll be in my office.”

Phil didn’t bother to retrieve his clothes as he left the room. Clint groaned and sunk back into his pillow, and tried to go back to sleep.

He wasn’t successful.


	6. Chapter 6

Phil went back to work the following day, a little early. Clint woke up late, and was surprised to find several plates of food, covered in saran wrap, on his bedside table, along with five bottles of water. He smiled, scarfed down the one that looked the most breakfasty--pastries and cold bacon--rolled over, and went back to sleep.

He spent most of the day like that, sleeping and occasionally waking long enough to eat. Sometimes he was awake for half an hour at a stretch, smiling as he remembered the touch of Phil’s hands, the way he’d felt inside of him, the kindness and... even if he’d left in the end, he’d done more than he _had_ to.

Agreeing to be Phil’s second partner was the best choice Clint had made in his entire life, he hazily thought as sleep claimed him again.

By the time Phil returned home in the evening, two hours late, Clint mostly felt like a person again. He had limped out of the bedroom, realizing for the first time without Phil to help him how truly sore he was, and set up camp on the living room couch in front of the television.

He’d missed the _Dog Cops_ two-episode season finale, after all.

“Hi,” Clint said, as Phil walked past the door to his room. He’d left it open so he’d know as soon as Phil got home.

Phil walked straight past and disappeared into his office.

Clint, half-sitting from where he’d been getting up to give Phil a proper greeting, froze. Something in his chest stopped and then seemed to vanish, leaving him strangely hollow.

“Phil?” he called again, a little brokenly, even though he knew it was useless.

No one answered, and eventually Clint fell asleep to a _Supernanny_ rerun.

He thought that Phil came out and helped him to bed at some point late in the night, but he couldn’t quite convince himself that that part hadn’t been a dream. Regardless, he woke in his own bed.

He didn’t leave his room until Phil was gone the next day. He made himself breakfast, and decided he felt well enough to run a couple of miles on the treadmill. After, he found himself at loose ends--he didn’t really want to go all the way to the archery club, or out of the apartment at _all_ for that matter, and none of the television shows on his tablet sounded particularly interesting at that moment. He just... really wanted to talk to Phil. To thank him for what he’d done, to apologize for being so much trouble, to try kissing and touching and caressing without the misery of unfulfilled heat between them...

Clint desperately, desperately wanted Phil.

He found himself opening a search engine and typing Phil’s name in. Philip Jonas Coulson.

The first result was for the Phil’s accounting firm, and was a basic, utterly ordinary page detailing Phil’s history with the company, his credentials, and giving a number for interested clients to call. The picture of Phil was even worse than the one Clint had been given at the orphanage. It didn’t capture the incredible color of his eyes or the way they crinkled when he smiled one of his tiny sincere smiles, or the way his muscles shifted under his skin when he moved, or... any of the Phil that Clint knew.

Three pages of results in, Clint found the obituary. It was for a Steven Rogers Coulson, killed in a plane crash five years prior, survived by partner Philip J. Coulson. It was easy to look up the plane crash from there, a matter of typing in the date and ‘crash’ and clicking the first result.

It had been some population extremists, taking out an omega plane and claiming that it was for the greater good, a way to clean up the population and bring omega-alpha ratios back to controllable levels and punish some Repopulation Act nonconformists in the process.

Nevermind that the omegas on the plane had mostly been bonded to an alpha already, and many had children at home.

There were pictures of the victims on the article Clint visited. He traced a finger over the face of Steven Coulson, memorizing his features. He looked delicate, almost pretty, with golden hair and blue eyes. His shoulders were thin, fragile-looking, every bit the opposite of Clint.

There was a link to another obituary. Clint clicked it and read, tears gathering in his eyes as someone--Phil, Clint thought, it must have been Phil--spoke of what a kind, good man Steve had been, how he had loved his husband and his art and hoped to start a family soon--how...

Clint closed the tab, set his tablet on the couch, and started dinner. Phil would be home soon.

Dinner that night was quiet, as Phil ate and Clint picked at his food. Clint found himself wondering what Phil’s dinners with Steven had been like like, wondering what they talked about, if they shared hopes and jokes and touches and smiles.

The next day he went to his archery club, and then to the grocery store, and then home to put everything away. He made dinner and left it on the table with a note-- _out, back tonight_ \--and then he went to the park and sat on a bench and thought of all the ways he hoped Phil was stewing and worrying and fretting over the places Clint might have gone.

He did the same thing the next night, and the next, and slowly he moved from parks to the kind of quiet diners where they would let him sit for hours without bothering him as long as he kept ordering more coffee, and sometimes a movie.

After the first week, he began spending some evenings at home again, and he would babble happily at Phil about his days at the archery club and his adventures in town and things he had seen, and he never once mentioned what he did on the evenings he didn’t come home until midnight or later.

Clint hoped it bothered Phil.

He hoped it bothered Phil _a lot_.

The way Phil watched him, with the slightest amused tilt to his lips and bright eyes, made Clint doubt it. It also made Phil look impossibly, hopelessly sweet in a way that made Clint want to lick his way inside Phil’s mouth, thrust his hands up under that neatly buttoned shirt and feel the smooth slide of that skin again. When that feeling came on him, he usually bit his lip and tried very, very hard to focus on dinner.

He spent the next night out, and this time he decided to try a bar. It had been years since he’d done this, not since before he came to the orphanage, so it took him a little while to find one that wouldn’t care about his age or gender or any sort of ID.

He ordered a beer and a couple of slices of pizza. As soon as the waitress had placed his food and drink on the table in front of him and walked away, a man with an obviously mechanical prosthetic arm sat down across from Clint.

“You look like shit,” he said, and he smiled. It was a friendly smile, or a kind one, but it was understanding.

“You too, sweetheart,” Clint drawled.

“Look, I gotta be out of here to meet someone else in like half an hour, but my name’s Bucky,” he said. “We’re in the archery club together?”

Clint thought he would have recognized someone shooting with a mechanical arm. Bucky must have been able to read it in his face, because he shrugged and grinned a little sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about it, I gotta go, but I’ll see you in the club sometime.”

He stood and left without another word. Clint watched him leave, bemused. It was probably the weirdest encounter he’d had with someone since his days in the circus, but it was kind of... nice, to know that someone had noticed him and wanted to talk to him, had stopped to introduce himself.

Clint was starting to think that every time he sat with Phil, every time they spoke, Phil was projecting another face and another voice on Clint, one he would have preferred.

He ate all of the pizza, but no matter how much he recited to himself that a little alcohol early in a pregnancy wouldn’t hurt anything, he ended up leaving without touching the beer. He got home earlier than usual, just in time to find Phil slipping out of his room.

They both froze, staring at each other.

“Why were you--?” Clint began, before cutting himself off. They both knew that Phil technically had every right. Still, it rankled, to know Phil had been in his room, looking at his things, when he still hadn’t seen so much as a sliver through a crack in the door of Phil’s personal space.

“I got back late,” Phil said, quietly. “I wanted to see if you were home or not.”

Clint wanted to believe him.

Clint, unfortunately, had a great eye for lies.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Phil frowned at him.

“Clint--”

“Why were in my room?”

“You haven’t done laundry this week. My favorite sweatpants are still in there--I was going to get them so that I could wash my own clothes.”

“You said I didn’t have to do stuff around here if I didn’t want to,” Clint said, and his voice sounded frustratingly pouty instead of cool and challenging.

“You don’t,” Phil said slowly, patiently. Clint kind of wanted to punch him in the face. “But I’m still out of clean clothes. I’m not asking you to wash them, I’m just explaining why I was in your room.”

The most frustrating part was that Clint was pretty sure he wasn’t even lying.

“How come it’s okay for you to go in my room but I can’t even see yours?” Clint demanded.

Phil frowned, and didn’t answer.

“You won’t tell me anything, won’t share _anything_ with me!” Clint said. Some part of him was distantly aware that he had raised his voice, was almost shouting in his anger.

“Clint--” Phil tried again. Furious, Clint stomped past him into his room, slamming the door behind him.

He seethed on his bed, mumbling all the things he really wanted to say to Phil, for what felt like a couple of eternities.

After a while, Phil knocked on his door. Clint glanced at the clock--it had only been about half an hour.

For a moment, he considered just ignoring Phil. He thought that if he did, Phil would maybe just go away.

The knock came again.

“What?” he snapped, his voice coming out rough and uneven. He _hated_ that it must have sounded like he was crying.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, quietly. “I won’t come in your room outside of your heats without your permission again. Is that fair?”

Clint nodded, and then realized that Phil couldn’t see him.

“Fine,” he said, pleased with how grouchy he sounded. He thought he heard Phil huff a laugh on the other side of the door.

“Clint?” Phil asked again.

“What?”

“I have a request to make, as your alpha.”

Clint stilled for a moment. Then he forced himself to relax, and picked at a run in his comforter while he considered all the things Phil might ask him.

In the end, he decided, it didn’t matter. Phil could _make_ him do it, even if he didn’t want to.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I would appreciate it very much if you were here for dinner tomorrow evening, instead of out,” Phil said, his voice still quiet.

Clint didn’t bother to reply. After a while, he heard the soft patter of Phil’s bare feet as he walked back to his office.

Clint figured he’d decide whether or not to obey while he was out the next day.


	7. Chapter 7

Clint didn’t bother to wake up and make coffee or lunch for Phil the next day. He dropped by the archery club and demolished a few too many targets. He stopped in front of the small grocery store where he usually bought their groceries, and then walked past, kicking at the sidewalk as he went.

He bought a hot dog from a stand, and threw it out when he decided that the smell seemed off somehow.

He honestly didn’t want to see Phil. Ever. Again.

But he really wanted to know why it was so important for him to be there for dinner.

Around five-thirty, he gave in to curiosity and dropped into an Indian Place that smelled particularly good to pick up dinner. The walk home was short, fortunately. He’d had just enough time to get everything situated when the click of the lock in the door echoed through the quiet apartment.

“How was your day?” Clint asked, after a few minutes of eating in silence. He was here, goddamnit, and he wanted his answers.

“It was fine,” Phil answered, a little mechanically, “I, uh, I’m glad you came. I got you something.”

Clint felt stupid, useless hope welling up in him. Phil’s last gift to him had been the bow that occupied a prized position in his room when he wasn’t using it. Clint wondered what Phil might have found for him this time.

Phil reached into his briefcase and pulled out a simple brown sack. He offered it to Clint, who carefully accepted it.

It was light, and rattled a little as he handled it. He tipped it, and a white cardboard box slid out into his hand, a--Clint froze.

“A, a pregnancy test?” he stuttered.

“It’s been three weeks--it isn’t a guaranteed result, granted, but it should work. I need to know if I should schedule time out of next week or not,” Phil said, still quiet.

“Oh,” Clint said.

He’d expected--he didn’t know what he had expected, but this hadn’t been it.

“Should I...” he asked.

Phil gave him a small smile, one of the ones that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Eat first?” he asked. “We wouldn’t want the food to go cold.”

He didn’t comment on the fact that Clint hadn’t cooked.

Clint ate slowly, aware that every bite put him closer to taking that stupid little test. He hadn’t eaten for most of the day, and he was starving. He managed to eat almost everything he’d bought, and even ate slowly enough to stretch it out for close to half an hour. Phil finished much more quickly, and instead of retreating to his office as he usually did, he sat and watched Clint eat. Finally, Clint could not reasonably scrape at the takeout boxes any longer. 

“Clint,” Phil said.

Feeling cold dread build in the pit of his stomach, Clint stood and palmed the box with the pregnancy test. Phil followed him out of the kitchen, but split to take up camp on the couch in the living room. Clint continued on, down the hall, into the restroom.

The instructions were simple and pretty much the same as in every television show ever: pee on stick, wait ten minutes, read what it says. Clint did his duty, set it on the counter, and moved to go back to the living room and wait with Phil.

He paused at the door handle, and then returned to sit on the toilet, wrapping his arms around himself. He didn’t even know which result would be better; a positive, promising nine months free of cramps and agony and pain, or a negative, promising him another month to delay his impending parenthood.

The clock on the wall said it had been closer to twenty minutes by the time Clint worked up the courage to check the test.

n o t p r e g n a n t, it read, in tiny font. Clint’s hands shook as he held it and considered what would come next. Should he take it out to Phil, show him? Or toss the gross, pee-soaked thing and just tell him? Should he lie--no, of course not, it would be immediately clear when he went into heat the following week--should he--

Clint dropped it into the trash, and sat back down on the toilet.

Any second, he expected a knock on the door, Phil inquiring about the results, but it never came. Another ten minutes passed before the shakes stopped and and slowly, heavily, Clint opened the door to the bathroom and walked back to the living room.

Phil was still waiting, screwing with something on his personal tablet. He looked up when Clint entered.

Clint shook his head.

Phil sighed, and it sounded like _relief_. Clint looked up, just in time to catch the smile on Phil’s face, bright, like he’d just been granted a stay of execution.

Clint turned around, walked straight back into the bathroom, and threw up. Phil must have been just behind him, because before he could start a second round someone was pressing a cool cloth against the back of his neck and making soothing noises.

“Hey, it’s okay. It doesn’t generally happen the first time, especially without a bond...” Phil said, and he was probably trying to sound comforting, but all Clint could hear was the relief underlying his words. He wondered just how disappointing he must have been, that Phil wanted so badly to get rid of him. Clint wanted to say a thousand things; why don’t you want me, why did you pick me and make me think that maybe I was being rescued if you never wanted your plan to work, am I really so bad that you can’t stand the thought of having children with me?

He pressed his lips together and tried not to vomit a second time, and didn’t voice any of the things crushing his sense of hope.

He lay awake in bed that night, thinking of what their kids would look like, what they would be like. Before, he had only imagined what it would be like for him, to be a parent; now he thought of what they might be like, bright, smart, wonderful. He wanted those children in the world, and he hated, _hated_ knowing that Phil didn’t.

In the early hours of the morning Clint swore he wouldn’t spend any more evenings here or give Phil any more of himself than he already had. Phil was clearly going to get rid of him, clearly did not want to carry through with their bargain, so Clint would stop trying to make Phil want to keep him and focus on enjoying the time he had.

It was a promise made in anger, and Clint knew he would break it, knew he wouldn’t be able to stop it when his next heat came on and he had no choice but to beg Phil for his help.

When his tablet sounded its horrible, soothing alarm, Clint was still awake. He shut it off, rolled over, and carried on seething.

After that, it wasn’t just diners or even bars. Clint wasn’t pregnant, didn’t particularly feel the need to reign himself in, and some part of him maybe hoped that Phil would come looking for him, would find him and regret what he had done. Raves were easy enough to find, even out of practice as he was.

The part of him that maybe still hoped that he would become pregnant, that Phil would want to keep him after all, stayed away from the drugs passed around in the clubs he frequented. Alcohol, though, and the harsh pounding of music that echoed through him and made him feel numb and hollow-boned, or the feel of sweat-slick skin grinding against him as they danced--those were fair game.

If Phil knew when he slipped into the apartment around three every morning, stumbling and drunk--and he had to, the office light was almost always on--he never mentioned it. He didn’t complain that Clint had stopped packing his lunches, that Clint wasn’t doing the laundry or that the cleaning lady had refused to clean the kitchen because Clint had left too much of a mess.

Clint hated him for it, a little. He hated the words that echoed in his head: _I don’t care how you spend your time, or with whom_. He hated that Phil was so tangled up in a dead man that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him. He hated that Steven had apparently been so perfect and pure and great that even after he was dead Clint couldn’t pick up the pieces Phil had broken into.

He hated himself for choosing this over the factory dormitories, hated himself for ever believing that something might go right in his life at all.

So he went to clubs, and raves when he could find them. He volunteered to strip and let a pretty beta woman apply eyeliner to him, and enjoyed it when she cooed over the way it looked. He learned that his body really did not like to mix wine with tequila, something he’d forgotten from his days in the circus, and found that certain places in the world considered you freer without a wedding ring than with.

It only took a week for Clint to get busted. The race was worth being frog-marched up to Phil’s apartment by a cop, though. Phil opened the door, bleary-eyed from sleep, and took in the scene before sighing and standing aside. One officer released Clint and stepped back.

“It’s his first adult offense,” the other officer intoned, without releasing her crushing grip on Clint’s arm. Clint would have been inclined to dislike her for the unnecessary show of brutality except he was pretty sure the officer had just taken note of how hard he was shaking and was trying to make sure he didn’t fall over.

“Uh, yes,” Phil said, sounding uncertain. He seemed to be eyeing Clint for any sign of injury. Clint caught the moment when his eyes took in the glitter that had rubbed off on Clint’s clothes, the scent of alcohol and other people and the smudge of black lipstick on his chin, and realized what exactly Clint had been doing. If he had suspected before, he knew for cerain now. “I’m sorry, officer. I’ll take it from here.”

The officer made a gruff sound of compliance, and dropped her hold on Clint. Clint stumbled forward and Phil just barely managed to catch his arm and stop him from falling over entirely. He manhandled Clint to the couch before murmuring something polite to the officer and closing the door.

Clint watched, trying to suppress a cascade of giggles.

“What did you take?” Phil demanded, as soon as the door was shut and the officers’ footsteps had faded down the hall.

“Nothing,” Clint said, gasping a little. His lungs didn’t seem to want to work quite right.

“What did you drink?” Phil asked next, clearly changing tactics.

“Some beer, from a bottle. Tossed it when I didn’t finish it,” Clint said, breathing harder now. But god, if he didn’t--

“Clint, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” Phil snapped, _finally_ annoyed. Finally caring.

Clint considered stringing him along for a while longer, but then a particularly vicious cramp hit. Clint couldn’t quite contain his gasp, or stop himself from curling into the pain.

Phil pulled away instantly.

He scented the air, and Clint saw the precise moment when Phil realized that he’d missed Clint’s heat scent beneath the reek of alcohol and tobacco and sweat from other people.

“You’re in heat,” he said, flatly. Clint didn’t see any point in denying it, so he nodded and curled up a little more the round of cramps made their way through his body. The cops would never have caught him on foot if he hadn’t been more or less immobilized by them in the first place.

“How long?” Phil demanded, a dangerous edge to his voice.

“Early this afternoon,” Clint gritted out. Phil sat back and stared at him for a moment.

“If you _ever_ do something that _stupid_ again, I will confine you to the apartment for the duration of our agreement. Do you understand me?”

Clint nodded, miserably.

“Bath first, and then... well, we’ll talk after. Especially about the fact that you’re not regular--if I’d known, I would have taken today off too.”

Pathetically, hatefully grateful to him despite the harsh words and the threats, Clint nodded and let Phil lead him to the bathroom.


	8. Chapter 8

Phil started the hot water running and then efficiently stripped Clint down. Clint shivered as Phil’s hand traveled over his shoulders, his back, as his fingers brushed Clint’s thighs while he pulled his pants down. As soon as he was undressed, Phil manhandled him into the bathtub, closing the drain and letting the hot water slowly fill up around Clint.

“Water’ll just get dirty too,” Clint mumbled, half out of his mind with the way Phil smelled, the way his fingers were still casually brushing against Clint’s shoulder as he sat beside the tub.

“I’ll run the shower after,” Phil said, succinctly. A few minutes later, he turned off the water.

“Just relax,” he told Clint, his own voice settling into something less harsh and annoyed and more soothing and gentle. Clint felt as if he could sink into that voice forever. Phil continued to brush his fingers against Clint’s shoulders, light, glancing caresses that left Clint shaking for more. After a while, Phil stood, and helped Clint up as well.

“Soap,” he said, pointing at Clint’s favorite body wash. “Shampoo. Clean yourself and then come and get me. I’ll be in your room.”

Clint whimpered at the loss of contact when Phil released him and left the bathroom. He showered as quickly as he could manage, and stumbled out of the shower in search of Phil just as the cramps started up again.

Phil was, thankfully, easy to find. He was perched of Clint’s bed, reading something on Clint’s tablet. When Clint drew closer, already stretching his arms out beseechingly, Phil sat it aside carefully and reached out to accept Clint’s embrace.

“Shhh, shhh,” he said, the mantra already familiar after only one heat. “Everything will be okay, Clint.”

This time he was not as gentle or as careful with Clint, and in so many ways that was better; Phil pounding into him was better than Phil fucking him carefully, gently; Phil biting the tendon that ran along his shoulder pulled something in Clint so much tighter than gentle kisses had. And when Clint sobbed with the frustration of being unable to find release, Phil’s fingers digging into his arms and the heavy weight of Phil’s body settling on top of him while Phil nipped, harshly, at his lips was so much better than soothing words.

He did his best to behave, to show Phil how good he could be when Phil just gave him what he wanted. He ate and drank without a fuss, and even let Phil coax him back into the shower to clean off early the next morning. He made little noises of agreement the one and only time Phil got angry enough about the clubbing again to chew him out.

For a few minutes early in the evening, he was lucid enough to offer to make them both omelettes. Phil shut him down immediately, but he ordered something and brought it in for Clint.

Sometime during the second day, when it was at its worst, when Clint felt like he couldn’t possibly survive this, he blurted out: “I know about Steven.”

The anguish in his voice was embarrassingly evident.

Phil pulled away immediately, and watched Clint with hooded eyes.

“I know,” he said, eventually, far too evenly for someone who had been eating Clint out seconds before. His lips were still shining with Clint’s slick. “I checked your browser history when you started spending evenings out. I was worried.”

“I’m not--” Clint bit out, as his body caught up with the fact that Phil was no longer touching him and the cramps had started to curl through his belly again. Some part of him knew that there was nothing Phil could do to fix it, to fix him, but the greater part of him absolutely believed in that moment if he could just convince Phil of how he felt, convince Phil to love him back, everything would be better. It would stop hurting so much, it would be nice, everything would be... better.

“I can’t be him, Phil, I’m so sorry but I can’t. And I know you were bonded and I know how much that means and I know, I know you loved him and I get it, I swear I do, but please, _please_ , you could love me too, I know I can’t be as good as him but I swear I’ll do my best, _God_ , Phil, _please_. I won’t go out anymore, I’ll do everything you need, I can be better, I can be _perfect_ if you’ll just give me the chance.”

Phil watched him, eyes dark and mouth downturned.

“ _Please,_ ” Clint sobbed.

“I’ll give you what I can, Clint,” Phil said very, very quietly. Far too gently, he helped Clint flip over, and then he slid into Clint again. Clint grunted softly, and if he was crying, it wasn’t from frustration or pain or ecstasy.

Even like this, with Clint begging Phil with every fiber of his being for just a little sliver of his heart, Phil denied him. Clint wanted to pull away; instead he leaned back into Phil, savored the way Phil hit him just right, savored the slide of Phil’s skin against his own let himself believe, just for a while, that in a minute Phil’s knot would swell and fill him up and everything would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

It was less than half an hour before Clint was so far gone that he had to be tied down again for his own protection. Half an hour after that he was sobbing to Phil that he would be good, so good, if Phil would only give him a chance.

Phil brushed his hair down, like he had that first heat, and kept repeating, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, shhhh, please, shhhh, it’ll be okay,” like a mantra to ward away pain.

It didn’t work at all.

“You’re fine, you do fine, you’re great,” Phil said at one point. “You’re stupid sometimes, but you’re great. You make my life so much easier.”

Clint wasn’t sure he wasn’t imagining that part. Heat haze could do that sometimes, make you believe in things that you didn’t have.

At some point, late in the night when Clint was writhing and sobbing and begging for Phil to please, please just give it to him, Phil started humming and then, quietly, singing.

For a moment, the cramps and the shakes stopped, and Clint lay still and listened. It was a lullaby, and old one, and he hadn’t heard it since the bearded lady had left the circus. Phil’s voice was soft and velvety, but he couldn’t carry a tune to save his life, and the result wasn’t at all alluring.

The song was over too quickly.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said again. “It’s too soon for me, I’m sorry. If we had the bond...”

He sounded sad, but not at all regretful. Clint could hardly blame him; after all, who could regret giving their bond to the love of their life, even if they had lost them too young.

The cramps rolled over Clint once again, and he groaned with pain.

At some point, he called out for Barney, Barney come and get him out of here, he could find an alpha somewhere else, Barney please.

And again; Phil, please, please, I can be good, just... just _look at me_ , please, look at me and stop seeing _not-him_.

Finally, the waves of pain and need and desperation ebbed, and sleep crept in. He felt Phil stand up and leave the room even as it pulled him under, and this time he didn’t cry.

Clint figured he probably didn’t have much in the way of tears left, and for just a moment, he was lucid enough to feel ashamed of how desperate he had been, how shamelessly he had begged Phil to love him. For just a moment, he regretted letting Phil have that sort of upper hand.

Then Clint’s eyes fluttered the last millimeter closed, and he slept.

Phil was gone when he woke, back at work. Clint considered leaving, going out, but the heat tremors were still passing through him, weakly now, and he was exhausted. There were a couple of sandwiches and bottles of water on his bedside table this time, nothing as fancy as before but perfectly edible. He ate one, and drank a bottle of water, and went back to sleep. His day carried on that way, half hours of wakefulness and snatched snacks, and then hours of sleep. He heard Phil come home, but couldn’t will himself to get out of bed and greet him.

This time, however, Phil stopped in his doorway instead of walking straight past.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Fine,” Clint croaked. It wasn’t quite a lie.

“Liar,” Phil said, and Clint could just make out the familiar quirk of one of those tiny smiles. “I’ll bring you some more food. For now, rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Clint closed his eyes and willed himself not to worry about what that talk might entail. Fortunately, he was still utterly, completely exhausted, and sleep washed over him easily despite his fears.

In the morning, Phil was gone again, but there was more than enough food to last until he got home set out on the bedside table. Clint managed several hours awake, watching trashy reality television on his tablet and eating when he felt like it, before he took another nap. When he woke again, it was time to make plans.

He probably couldn’t convince Phil that his insecurities over Steven were completely fabricated, especially after those damning words: _I checked your browser history when you started spending evenings out._ At the very least, Phil knew that he knew about Steven and what had happened to him, and would view Clint’s concerns as perfectly natural insecurities for a newly-partnered omega. Clint could probably convince Phil that the severity of his distress, the confessions that had come dangerously close being about _love_ , were exaggerations brought on by his heat haze.

Somewhere in his machinations, sleep claimed him once again. This time, he woke to the familiar sound of the key clicking in the lock.


	9. Chapter 9

“I brought take-out home for dinner,” Phil said, stopping to stand in Clint’s doorway. “I thought... maybe we could eat in here? We need to talk.”

Clint peered at him from under the covers. Phil did indeed have two boxes that smelled incredible in his hands. The thought of hot food was almost enough to distract Clint from the somber expression on his face.

For a moment, Clint just watched him, and then he sat up.

“Alright,” Clint quietly agreed. Phil moved over to the bed, setting the food down on the side table just long enough to remove his suit jacket and drape it over the dresser beside Clint’s one picture of Barney. Then, he picked the food back up, offered a box to Clint along with a pair of chopsticks, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Clint dug in, mostly to avoid talking just yet. Phil watched him.

“You eat like you’re starving sometimes,” Phil finally said, an amused tilt to his mouth.

“Haven’t had chinese since--” Clint began, but cut himself off before he could say _the circus_.

“Since before the orphanage, I’m guessing,” Phil finished for him, and then took a bite of his own food. “Well, I hope you enjoy it. I had to guess at what you might like.”

“S’fine,” Clint mumbled, surprised that Phil had been concerned at all.

“Clint,” Phil said, and Clint closed his eyes and swallowed a bite of his food before looking back up at Phil. Apparently they weren’t going to finish eating before they had this conversation, then.

“During your heat, you mentioned having researched my previous partner. I can’t say that I’m surprised, or that I blame you.” There it was again, that tiny, amused tilt to his lips.

Slowly, Clint nodded.

“I suppose I owe it to you to at least tell you what happened.”

“I--I read the newspaper,” Clint managed to say. Dread curled through his stomach, nearly as bad as the heat haze cramps. “I know what happened.”

“No you don’t,” Phil replied, but his voice was gentle. Soothing. He took a deep breath, and Clint watched as his hands clenched and then released, and then he began.

“Steve was an orphan too. He was small and sickly, and the head of the orphanage he lived in didn’t even try to find a partner willing to take him. He went straight to the factory dormitories.”

Phil sighed, and twisted his hands together. “I don’t know how many omegas you might have known that ended up in the factory dormitories, or how much you might know about their lives there, but it’s... common practice for alphas who have already been bonded but are interested in a little extra on the side to make use of the omegas there. After all, omegas desperately want it during the haze, will beg for it, and there’s no danger of bonding. Most factory owners permit it in exchange for a little bit of cash, a favor here, a word there. To this day I don’t know how or if Steve managed to avoid that. I never worked up the courage to ask.”

“Thing was, he was... he was really good at drawing, and he was... stubborn. He knew he didn’t stand a chance in the factories, and he wasn’t going to die there. He’d draw things, sell them on street corners, take commissions--that’s how I met him. I was just a kid, barely out of college, and I’d forgotten to pick up something for mother’s day, and then there was this guy on a street corner selling drawings... I bought one. We chatted for a while, and the next day, I just... came back. He told me what he was doing and why. I hadn’t really understood, about the factory dormitories--he used to call them Virgin Prisons, as a joke I think--or... anyway, I didn’t understand any of what it was like, really. He... he taught me so much, about what the world was like for people who weren’t as lucky as me.”

“I requested to be partnered to him a week later. It was a little bit of a scandal--a young, intact alpha taking someone from a factory dormitory--but Steve had done some work for some newspapers in the area, and he talked to some people. They gave it a sort of Cinderella twist, helped things blow over pretty quickly.”

“We were... young. I got a job with the firm I’m with now, and we got this place. We were... I guess we thought we would start a family right away. We were so sure we were ready. We bought furniture, set up a nursery and everything. But Steve... he hadn’t ever been healthy. It was difficult--even with the bond, his heats would make him violently ill, sometimes so ill that I was afraid he would die. We tried even harder for a baby, hoping that a pregnancy would be less taxing on his system... that’s how stupid we were, how young. Months and then years passed, and... nothing. After a while, I packed up the furniture in the nursery because I couldn’t stand to see it anymore. I kept the door closed, but sometimes I would come home and find it open and I’d know that he’d been in there, fretting.”

Clint bit his lip. He wanted to reach over and catch Phil’s hand in his own, to still its shaking with a firm grip. He wanted to cry from envy or anger or bitterness or _something_ , thinking of that life Phil had had with Steve, and how even that little bit of happiness had been denied to him.

He wanted to crow, because _he_ was healthy, and _he_ could give Phil children where Steve, clearly, had not.

Clint bit his lip and looked away, ashamed at the thought.

“It wasn’t like on television,” Phil continued, and there it was again, that tiny, almost happy quirk of the mouth. “We fought pretty often, especially after... well. Steve kept working for the papers, and we found a studio that would let him show his art sometimes even though he was an omega. It was... we were happy. After the second year, he found a job. It’s easier to find employment as an omega when you can explain that you probably won’t be taking maternity leave any time soon, and this was before the Strict Enforcement Act, when plenty of people were willing to look the other direction if an omega didn’t have kids.”

“I didn’t--I like children, but I never wanted them the way Steve did. I knew he was unhappy. His art started to take on this sort of... dark edge, and then it really took off. He was always off flying somewhere for a show, doing interviews...”

“The last time we were together, he’d just stopped by between shows on opposite sides of the country to be with me through his heat. Then he was off again. He was scheduled to come back the next month for his heat again, but there was this crazy, record-breaking snowstorm and he was stuck somewhere in the midwest, I can’t remember.”

“He called me the evening of the day his heat should have started. He sounded--I don’t even know. Excited, telling me all about his art in a way that he hadn’t, not in a long while. He’d really enjoyed this show, sold most of the pieces he’d brought, and he was coming home to spend some time with me. I remember being... absurdly grateful, so glad that we’d be together again, even if it was just for a week or so before he was off jetsetting across the country again. I didn’t even really think about the day.”

Clint’s stomach sunk as he realized where this was leading.

“I missed a couple of calls from him the next day. I was busy, trying to get most of my work out of the way so that I could take some time off to be with him. He boarded a flight at five that evening. I must have missed the news, I don’t really--I don’t really remember. I was trying to make everything perfect, you know, the little things like remembering to shut the door to the attempted nursery, ordering takeout from this place he loved. I was about to leave for the airport, late, when I got the call.”

Phil took a deep breath, and in clipped, precise tones, recited the contents of the call.

“A plane had gone down. They did not yet know the cause. My husband had been on board, and was one of two passengers that had been pulled from the wreck and taken to a nearby hospital. He had died an hour later, before they could even identify him.”

Phil’s fists clenched again, until they were white-knuckled. When he released his grip, a wrinkle remained in the fabric of Clint’s comforter. Clint watched him, horribly, heartbrokenly mesmerized.

“He died a _John Doe_ , and I didn’t even know anything was wrong. I was just looking forward to him coming home.”

“If he--you said, he was going to start his heat the day before, why was he flying--?” Clint asked, a little desperately, terrified that he already knew the answer. Phil’s eyes darkened. He didn’t answer.

“Was he--?” Clint asked again, because some horrible, broken part of him _needed_ to know.

After a long, tense moment in which neither of them moved, Phil relaxed just a little.

“I don’t know,” he said, and he was always quiet, but Clint had never heard his voice quite so soft or so broken. “I refused to let them conduct an autopsy. I didn’t want to know. He didn’t even leave me a voicemail...”

“Maybe he wanted to tell you in person,” Clint said, and immediately regretted his words. Phil obviously wanted to believe-- _had_ to believe, maybe--that Steve had not, finally, been pregnant when he died. That the future they wanted together hadn’t been right in front of them, only to be snatched away.

“Maybe,” Phil said, even more softly than before. He sighed again, shifted, and then looked up at Phil.

“I wasn’t lying to you in the diner that evening. I don’t--I loved him, so much. I don’t know if I can ever have that again. I wouldn’t have tried, but reinforcement of the population laws has gotten so much stronger since the SEA, and I was informed that I had two years to find a new partner and have a child. I told you that part, before we signed the papers.”

“Why me?” Clint asked, his voice too loud next to Phil’s softness and the silence of the apartment.

Another tiny half-smile tugged at Phil’s lips.

“I guess I thought maybe I owed it to Steve. He hated the omega orphanage he’d grown up in, hated the factory, hated the life that he’d been confined to by Repopulation Acts. Maybe I’m still ignorant and spoiled and naive, but I guess I thought I could save someone else from that life. I thought maybe that could make up for the selfishness of taking a second partner, knowing that I could never give them what they needed when the time came, because someone else already had my bond.”

Clint shifted on the bed, rustling the covers.

“I’m sorry,” Phil added, the first time he had said it outside of the pangs of Clint’s heat.

“No, it’s...” Clint trailed off, and shifted again, trying to gather his thoughts. He took another bite of his chinese, close to cool now. “Thank you,” he said, finally, “for, you know, getting me out of that. The name Virgin Prison isn’t a joke--in the factory dormitories, they put hormones in the food that make each shift’s heat sync up, so they can plan for other shifts to cover instead of shutting the whole thing down. They’re called Virgin Prisons because the wails of that many unmated omegas in the heat haze, all at once...”

Clint shook his head to clear it.

“So, thank you, Phil, for saving me from that. And thank you for telling me about Steve.”

Phil smiled at him, kindly, and leaned forward to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Finish your dinner and then rest some more. I know you’ll probably feel better by tomorrow, but will you be there for dinner?”

Clint looked down at his bed and nodded. Phil stood, and Clint slid back a little as the bed rose.

“Good night, Clint,” Phil said, just before he shut the door behind him.


	10. Chapter 10

Clint’s third heat didn’t come.

Phil didn’t say anything, other than to ask if Clint thought he ought to go into work in case he needed to take another day off later in the week. Clint agreed, mostly because he didn’t quite dare to hope, not so soon. If he maybe went about his business in the following days a little more cautiously than usual, watched what he ate, what he did, well... it was just good sense.

It took five days of constant distraction, pondering far too many ifs and buts and maybes, before Clint gave in and decided that it would be easier to know than to keep on wondering.

He set his alarm for a little earlier than usual, and saw Phil off for the first time in a while. Then he dressed, grabbed his bow and Phil’s dry-cleaning, and headed out. He dropped the dry-cleaning off and then went to the archery club, where he destroyed three targets and worked up a good sweat. He showered quickly in the club’s locker room, trying very hard not to pay attention to his flat, toned stomach or let his touches linger there. He was almost afraid to consider what might be happening beneath that skin. He couldn’t, not yet. He refused to have hope until he knew for certain that it was safe to what this thing he might not even have.

He stopped by by the grocery store on his way to collect Phil’s dry-cleaning. They had almost everything Clint needed for at least another week, but he still managed to spend a solid ten minutes finding excuses to walk past the family planning section, first from one direction, then the other. He was starting to garner odd looks from a few employees when he realizes that the ice cream was melting and gave in. He picked up the first test he saw and hurried through checkout.

He had to turn around and go back when he realizes that he’d picked up a test for a female beta.

He took his time putting away the groceries when he finally got home, and then he fretted entirely too much over hanging Phil’s suits up outside his door. He set the test on the bathroom counter, promising himself he’d take it just as soon as he changed out of the dirty gym clothes from the archery club.

He decided that the living room needed to be cleaned after he changed, so he spent half an hour tossing empty take-out boxes, straightening cushions, dusting furniture and vacuuming the carpet. When he was finished with that, he noticed that a stack of bills had accumulated on the kitchen bar where they usually ate, so he sat down and sorted through them. He left a stack of unpaids on the counter for Phil, and shredded the ones that were just notices of automatic payment withdrawals.

Then he didn’t need to piss, so he had to run to the corner store and pick up a couple of sports drinks and bring them back, and then naturally they needed to be accompanied by a sandwich. Clint spent a slightly ridiculous amount of time selecting exactly the right ingredients and assembling the perfect sandwich.

All in all, he managed to successfully avoid the test sitting tauntingly on the bathroom counter until two in the afternoon, when the sports drinks hit him hard and he couldn’t really come up with any more excuses not to wait.

He shuffled into the bathroom, feeling tense and itchy, and picked up the test. The instructions on this one were slightly different from the first; five minutes of waiting and a little blue plus sign instead of an actual display.

Clint vaguely wondered if there was a test that turned purple and why he hadn’t checked, and then snorted at himself.

He finally pulled the test out of the box and got down to business.

He left it on the bathroom counter and went to run on the treadmill in the gym in order to work off some steam. After that, he vacuumed the hall, and then he washed the dishes, and then it was time to start a really nice dinner that he had had no intention of making even half an hour before.

By the time Phil’s key clicked in the lock, right at six, dinner was ready and the kitchen already cleaned.

“Hi,” Clint said, brightly. Phil raised an eyebrow.

“I made dinner,” Clint said, unnecessarily, since the food was plainly in Phil’s line of sight.

“I see that,” Phil said, studying him with an unusual intensity.

“Lasagna, from scratch. And garlic bread, and broccoli, and there are some strawberries in the fridge if you want them,” Clint added.

“That sounds really nice, Clint,” Phil replied.

Clint crowded him around the corner until he was sitting down, and then turned to watch him as he bit in. Clint had made his share of cheap homemade lasagna for the kids at the orphanage, but he’d had his pick of ingredients for this one, and personally he thought it was kind of amazing. Phil hummed a little as he bit down.

“This is great,” he said, and Clint grinned at him.

“It’s just a shame you didn’t have any wine around. I didn’t have a pass to buy any, but the recipe says that you should drink it with wine,” Clint said happily, before turning and digging into his own meal. He focused on the flavor of the spices and cheeses and sauce and tried not to smack his lips too loudly.

When he finally put his fork down and looked up, Phil was watching him again

Clint hated the way he could feel the blood immediately rushing to his face. He knew from experience that he was visibly flushing. God, could he be any more obvious?

“Clint, are you...?” Phil asked.

“I... I took a test,” he admitted, slowly. “I haven’t, um, checked it yet.”

Phil stared at him.

“I forgot!” Clint protested. It didn’t come out very convincingly, which was probably why Phil kept staring at him like he was insane.

Finally, Phil sighed. “Do you want me to...?” he asked. Clint studied him for a moment, unsure. The way Phil had reacted to that first result still rankled, even if Clint understood it, a little, now.

“No, I’ll check it,” he said, more quietly this time. He slipped out of his chair and into the bathroom. His hand hovered over the est for a moment, and finally he huffed out an annoyed breath, picked it up, and read it.

It was a weird sort of purple minus sight with _maybe_ a vertical blue line running through it. A very faint one. Maybe.

Clint groaned and tossed it in the trash.

“I couldn’t even _read_ it,” he said, a little too loudly, as he walked back to Phil in the kitchen. Phil snorted.

“You couldn’t it read, huh?” he asked, sounding amused.

“It was supposed to be a blue plus or a pink minus, but it was more of a... I don’t know, a purple minus with a blue ghost plus or something!” Clint said. He threw his hands up in the air for dramatic emphasis, hoping it would make Phil smile even though it was ridiculously dramatic and over-the-top.

This day had been way, way too long.

Phil’s lip twitched with what Clint thought might have been almost a laugh.

“I take it you got the cheapest one?” he asked.

Clint deflated a little.

“Ummmm... I don’t know?” he hazarded. Phil snorted out a little sound that was _definitely_ a laugh. Clint fought against answering with a smile of his own.

“Would you like to run down to the corner store with me and pick up a better one?” Phil asked. “Or just one of us could go if you’d prefer.” Clint realized, a little startled, that Phil wasn’t just amused. He seemed... happy. Pleased, at the very least. Clint couldn’t be reading him _that_ wrong.

Clint hesitated, and Phil added, “If you want, we can wait a few more days.”

Clint considered Phil’s offer. He could wait, still stuck on this stupid, miserable precipice of uncertainty. Or he could walk down to the corner store with Phil on what looked like a very lovely evening, pick up a test, and find out for sure, one way or another.

And if he was...

If he was _pregnant_ , then the deal would be sealed. He would get to stay here for the rest of his life. If he wasn’t, well, he was prepared for that. A couple of days of hope before a fall was pretty much par for course in Clint’s life.

“Yeah, let’s get another test,” he said. Phil offered him one of those small, precious smiles, and held out a hand. When Clint didn’t move, he nodded down at it, and then back at Clint. He looked like he might be on the verge of rolling his eyes. Clint ought to have tried to squash the light feeling that suddenly welled up in his chest and buoyed him up, but... maybe it was time for a little bit of hope.

He took Phil’s hand. Phil’s grip was light and loose, and Clint had to hurry a little to keep from losing the touch as Phil pulled his wallet out of his briefcase and grabbed the keys from beside the door. Clint followed him down the hall, out of the building, and down the couple of blocks between their building and the corner store. Phil never quite pulled his hand away, and Clint never stopped smiling.

Phil let Clint pick out the test, though he refused to get a second cheap test just because the positive test result was purple, especially since Clint couldn’t quite explain the joke in a way that made sense outside of his head. The clerk looked like he might coo at them as they paid, and he gripped Clint’s hand and smiled at him as he handed over the brown paper sack with the test inside.

If Clint gripped the bag just a little too tightly as they walked back, making the paper crinkle loudly with every movement, Phil was too nice to comment. Clint disappeared back into the bathroom as soon as they returned to the apartment. He didn’t delay in taking the test this time; he just wanted to _know_. He did his business, set the test on the counter, and hopped up to sit beside it and wait.

At minute nine, p r e g n a n t gradually faded onto the screen. Clint picked it up, hands shaking, for a closer look.

At minute eleven it was still there, and no ‘not’ had appeared in front of it.

“Oh,” he said, very quietly. Clint stood, stunned, and dropped it into the trash just like the first two. Then he walked back out of the bathroom and into the living room where Phil was waiting on the couch, just like the time before.

Phil turned as soon as Clint entered the room. Clint wondered how he’d known, if he’d been listening or had some sort of eye in the back of his head or...

“So?” Phil asked, sounding almost eager.

“Yeah,” Clint said, and it came out every bit as breathless and stunned as he felt. “I, yeah. It was, yeah.”

The smile that Phil gave him was wide and unfamiliar and _incredible_. It faded pretty quickly, but something small and pleased continued to hover at the corners of his mouth.

“Congratulations,” Phil said. And, after a moment: “I don’t... I’ve never... are we supposed to celebrate, or something?”

Clint let out a surprised laugh.

“I have _no idea_ ,” he said, because he had been the youngest child, and then the kid in the circus, and then the kid who had presented omega at fifteen and been taken by the state to live in an omega orphanage a week later. He’d never even known anyone who was having a baby.

Phil tilted his head and peered curiously at Clint.

“There’s a marathon of _Cops & Criminals_ on tonight, and you usually keep some ice cream in the freeze. That enough of a celebration for you?”

Clint smiled and bobbed his head in a nod, and then went to get the ice cream. For the first time, _ever_ , something had gone completely, one hundred percent right.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A friendly reminder that, if you have any triggers, there are warnings in the end notes that you really should read.

Clint felt like he was living in some sort of glorious, dizzy haze. He had an appointment with a doctor at the end of the month to confirm and check everything. He had a partner who he’d be allowed to stay with, and maybe they weren’t bonded, but it was better than going it alone. He had hobbies and even a couple of people he talked to pretty regularly at his archery club. He had a nice place to live.

He had a _life_.

And he was... going to have a kid. It was terrifying but also, somehow, thrilling. He was going to be _so much better_ than his parents had been, and... he’d have help.

He might screw up his kid a little, but not in any of the horrifying, awful ways that he’d seen other kids screwed up. Not in any of the ways his parents had screwed him over. It was... he was going to have something he thought he’d never have again, a _family_.

His routine didn’t change much, but as he went about his days it felt like everyone gave him knowing looks. Clint figured he was probably paranoid, but it made him itch beneath his skin, made him want to just shout to the whole world that _he’d gotten something right_. Finally!

And then, two weeks in, he woke up from a nap late in the afternoon, overheated and nauseous and slick. There weren’t any cramps, not this early in the heat, and--Clint froze.

 _No_.

He scrambled out from under the sheets. Slick had soaked through his boxers and into his bed, leaving a damp stain. Now that he was awake, the cramps were stealing in, rippling through his abdomen and driving the horror home.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, completely unable to move as he waited to wake up or be offered his do-over or... anything. He wished, desperately, that he had stayed asleep. He wished he could take it back, only he didn’t know how.

His tablet was sitting on the bedside table. He could call Phil, go to the hospital, _fix_ this somehow...

But Phil would be angry. It had been so clear, in the weeks since the positive test, that Phil was pleased, that he wanted to have a kid with Clint. Clint had even heard him humming once, totally out of tune, when he had walked by his office in the evening. The door to that third, empty bedroom hadn’t been carefully closed all the time as it usually was. Phil _wanted_ this baby, and Clint had failed him.

If Clint called him now, he... he really didn’t know what Phil would do. He might send Clint back to the orphanage to be passed on to the factory dormitories, or he might...

Clint just didn’t _know_. He didn’t have anything but half-remembered horror stories from his days in the circus, terrible things that happened to omegas when their alphas cast them out, and years of learning not to hope.

His choice was taken away when the front door to the apartment opened ten minutes later. Clint hadn’t even heard the telltale click of the lock. There was a gentle thud as Phil set his briefcase down, and the click of the keys being lifted to their hook, and then--the keys paused for a moment, jangling, and fell to the floor with a clatter. Phil was standing in the doorway of Clint’s room less than ten seconds later, wide-eyed and flushed.

“ _Clint?_ ”

Clint whimpered and turned away.

“I’m going to call the doctor,” Phil said, and his footsteps thumped across the floor. The world felt sharp and heavy and dangerous, and Clint clung desperately to the murmur of Phil’s voice as he spoke to the doctor over his tablet in the other room. It sounded harsh and raspy and _afraid_ , and if it was the last time Clint was going to hear him he was going to pay attention. He could make out the occasional word, _not okay_ and _you’ll make time_. After a few minutes, Phil returned and helped Clint to the car. Everything seemed harsh and blurred and dangerous, but through his haze Clint was pretty sure that they were moving too fast. Everything hurt and nothing seemed quite real.

The doctor’s explanation was clinical.

Clint’s hormone levels were low. False positives were not unheard of, and the traces in Clint’s blood work could be unrelated to pregnancy. If Clint had indeed been pregnant, he had probably miscarried very early, at least a week before. Male-male genetics were tricky; a few “misfires” were to be expected. Clint watched him steadily, feeling hollow; Phil flinched at the word “misfires”. The light seemed too bright, the colors too vivid, and sometimes it seemed like Phil’s grip on his shoulder was the only thing holding him in place.

The doctor patted Clint on the back, hard, and wished him luck in trying again. As they left, the Doctor tugged Phil sharply to the side. Clint could hear his harsh, murmured, “Don’t even _try_ to get any suppressants. Even if you found safe ones, his body wouldn’t be able to take them right now.”

Phil nodded, scowling, wrapped his hand around Clint’s arm and guided him away from the doctor. They were ushered from the office by a pair of male beta nurses, not very subtly to ensure that no one picked up on Clint’s heat scent and tried to interfere.

The drive home was spent in silence.

Phil helped Clint up to their apartment, and then gently settled him into his bed. Clint turned away from him.

“Clint,” Phil said, and the bed dipped as he sat down. Cloth rustled as he removed his jacket and shoes, dropping them on the floor beside the bed. He crawled up closer to Clint, who couldn’t quite find it in himself to move away. His body seemed so, so heavy, and he was so tired.

“It happens. I’m so sorry,” Phil said.

 _But the test..._ Clint wanted to say, because how could something like that be _wrong?_

Hesitantly, Phil slipped a hand up over Clint’s hips and began to rub his belly, soothing the heat haze cramps. His other hand threaded through Clint’s hair, and Clint finally gave in, shaking with the force of his repressed sobs.

“Shh, shhh,” Phil whispered, and, “I’m so sorry.”

Phil never tried for more touch than that, though sometimes Clint could feel him hard against his hip, unable to resist reacting to the scent of an omega deep in heat.

Clint’s heat worsened quickly, exacerbated by Clint’s distress and probably whatever his hormones were doing; by ten that night Phil had tied him down for safekeeping. He stayed the entire night, telling Clint stories and occasionally (badly) singing him songs, the way he had before. He tried not to touch Clint too often, as it seemed to make the pain worse, but sometimes he would reach up and run his fingers through Clint’s hair again, and Clint would be able to still himself for just a little while.

Clint refused to eat, and he refused to drink. Phil, to his surprise, didn’t force him, not even when he vomited bile on the bed covers and Phil had to drag him into the living room and settle him on the couch while he cleaned the mess.

For most of that day, he lost track of everything but the soothing sound of Phil’s voice and the occasional brush of his fingers. More than once, Clint hoped that this would be it, this would be the last one; at the end, he would go to sleep and never wake up.

When Clint finally came to, three days in, Phil was still there. He had exhausted bags under his eyes and was still running his fingers through Clint’s hair.

“Phil?” he asked blearily, wondering why Phil was still here if he was tossing Clint to the factories or, worse, into the streets straight out of heat.

Phil gave him a slow, wan smile and slowly pulled his fingers away.

“It’s not... this, I don’t know how much anyone ever talked to you about this, but it’s not uncommon, Clint. It will take some time, but you will be okay, I promise.”

Clint looked away again, and did his best to bury his face in his pillow before asking, “Are you sending me away?”

He wondered, vaguely, if Phil would even be able to understand his muffled words.

Phil rested a warm hand over the base of Clint’s spine and rubbed a small circle against the skin there.

“Of course not,” he said, sounding unbearably kind. Clint was left to hope that he wasn’t lying, because he was too exhausted and too sad to trust his own judgement on the matter.

Phil stayed with him through the day after his heat ended, cooking (ordering take-out), cleaning, and making sure Clint ate, drank, and bathed. He gently pulled Clint out to sit with him on the sofa after lunch, and they watched really shitty reality television together. It made Clint stupidly angry that some of these people got to leave with the prize, when the the universe apparently didn’t even see fit to let him stay afloat.

Maybe Phil could sense when he felt like that, because without fail, whenever Clint’s bitterness threatened to overwhelm him, Phil would reach over and lace his fingers through Clint’s and squeeze. Then he would skip to whatever was next in the queue, and after a while Clint would relax beside him and he would pull away to get something else.

On the third day, Phil asked if Clint needed him to call in.

“It’s Monday,” Phil said, when Clint stared at him. “I took three days off last week and I should get back, but I’ll call in if you need me.”

Clint thought, looking at Phil, that he really would.

Clint forced a smile.

“No, go ahead,” he said.

Phil nodded and gathered his things together. Before he left, he turned to add, “Clint... if you feel up to it, you might try to get back to some of the things you enjoy doing. It might be good for you to get out of the apartment.”

Clint hated him a little in that moment.

He nodded, and Phil left, locking the door behind him.

But when Phil got home, he brought dinner with him and he stayed on the couch to watch television with Clint instead of disappearing into his office.

Somewhere deep within him, Clint maybe began to try and have a little hope again. Just a little.


	12. Chapter 12

It took some time for Clint to settle back into his skin.

Phil hadn’t sent him away yet, which meant that he probably wasn’t going to. That, perhaps, was the most surprising of all to Clint; deep in his bones, he knew he was here to stay. Every morning when he woke up, he reminded himself that it was all in his head, that he wasn’t safe yet.

It certainly didn’t stop him from renewing the grocery order Phil had had in place before Clint had come to live with him, or from frantically pouring over new recipes on the internet trying to find new meals to make. It didn’t stop him from cleaning, obsessively, every room but that _one_ , or exercising until Phil gently pointed out that there was a very real danger Clint was going to wear out their treadmill.

When he ran out of things to do, he watched too much television, read the better part of his tablet’s free lending library, tried new music; anything to get out of his head for a while.

Two weeks after the disastrous, heartbreaking heat, another hit more or less on Clint’s normal schedule. Phil came home two hours early with a tiny, old pill bottle of illegal suppressants that he promised were harmless. Clint had no idea where he’d gotten them and Phil wouldn’t say anything other than that he had a friend with access to the equipment and chemicals necessary to manufacture these kinds of pharmaceuticals. It didn’t take much more than a particularly bad round of cramps to convince Clint to take them.

After all, he’d survived bad suppressants before, and he hadn’t even had medical care then. He was a little surprise, though, when all of his symptoms except a vague sense of nausea faded away within the hour. He mentioned that, pleased, and to his surprise Phil went down the corner store and picked up a case of ginger ale and some crackers, as if _nausea_ was something to worry about.

“Thank you,” Clint said, quietly, over dinner. “You didn’t have to go out of your way to...”

Phil offered him a tiny, wistful smile. “It was too soon. We can try again later, when you decide you’re ready.”

Clint wasn’t sure what to think, so he returned to picking at his vegetables. The part of him that had been left behind by his parents, his brother, the circus... that part wondered if Phil was just trying to make sure he didn’t get pregnant before Phil could get rid of him.

The larger, saner part thought of the heat cramps and nausea and fear, thought of how he should have been pregnant, should have been safe from the misery of heats for a solid forty-two weeks, and realized that Phil was just protecting him.

Clint closed his eyes, briefly enough that it probably looked like an over-long blink, and didn’t kiss Phil for his kindness and understanding. Maybe Phil understood something of what he was thinking, because he said, “I’m sorry that... I’m so sorry your life has made you believe that no one will ever help you just for the sake of helping, Clint.”

Clint gave him a wan smile of his own, curled in towards his plate a little more, and tried to eat.

He doubled his efforts to make sure that Phil wouldn’t find any fault with him after that. He cut back on his time on the treadmill, but he increased his time with the weights. He had a great body, and he knew that Phil appreciated it. He found crazier and more elaborate recipes, made Phil laugh a couple of times with his concoctions, and cleaned even more thoroughly.

If Phil noticed that Clint still hadn’t left the house, not since the miserable, rushed visit to the doctor, he didn’t say anything. He silently began taking his suits to the dry cleaners on his own, and didn’t mention Clint’s renewal of grocery deliveries. 

Clint’s fifth heat came on schedule, a month after the fourth. He was waiting on the couch when Phil came home, feeling jittery and overheated, curled up just a little bit from the earliest wave of cramps. Phil stopped in the doorway and stared at him, puzzled.

“Could you not find the suppressants?” he asked, sounding worried. “I left them in the medicine cabinet...”

Clint shook his head, and Phil dropped his briefcase onto the floor and disappeared farther into the apartment. He came back with the bottle quietly clinking in his hand and stopped just behind the couch, hovering over Clint. Clint stared at him. It had been kind of Phil to give him the suppressants for his last heat, so soon, too soon, but... there was a reason Clint was here, and it wasn’t to do laundry or eat up illegal suppressants that probably cost Phil an arm and a leg.

“I thought--” he began, and Phil huffed out a sigh. For the first time since Clint had met him in the entrance of the orphanage, he looked... angry.

“Clint,” he said, and his voice sounded calm despite the visibly tense line of Phil’s lips. “Why didn’t you take the suppressants?”

Clint continued to stare up at him, feeling utterly flabbergasted. With most alphas, he would have been confident in the assumption that that was an order, that there was a reason _they_ didn’t want to deal with his heat. With Phil... he thought Phil might actually be offering him a choice. For just a moment, Clint considered.

“You already gave me a break,” Clint said, quietly, “I thought you would want to start trying again. We only have nine more months.”

“You’re eighteen and, according the doctor, perfectly fertile,” Phil said, and he sounded less angry and more resigned now, “Nine months is more than enough time. If you want to try again already, I will... I’ll go call in the next couple of days right now.”

Phil looked down at Clint. His expression, very clearly, said that he did not believe for a second that Clint was ready to try again.

He thought of the cramps already clawing at his belly, thought of how they would expand until they seemed to be eating him from the inside. He thought of the miserable, sick haze and inertia of deep heat, the inescapable sense of fear. The nausea, the dizziness, and he thought, bitterly, that he shouldn’t have to go through that at all. He should be pregnant, musing over how soon he was going to start showing, the upcoming date when they could find out if it was male or female, maybe even if it was an alpha or not. He shouldn’t be sitting here, too-hot and selfishly sad, staring up at Phil and trying to figure out what he wanted from Clint.

Clint nodded, and Phil handed him the pill bottle. Phil fetched his tablet from his briefcase as Clint downed one of the tiny blue pills and hooked it up to the television. He picked one of Clint’s favorite mindless reality shows with surprising ease and settled onto the couch beside Clint to watch with him. If he kept an eye on Clint a little more than on the television, it wasn’t so obtrusive that Clint couldn’t enjoy the show.

Phil turned it off after the first episode, just as Clint’s symptoms finally faded entirely.

“Clint,” he said, with a voice full of quiet command. Immediately tense, Clint half turned to face him.

“I’m not going to kick you out,” Phil said, evenly. Clint’s head jerked up to meet Phil’s gaze. Phil was practically oozing sincerity, probably on purpose, but even so Clint could find no malice underneath it. There was nothing but kindness and understanding in those eyes, slightly crinkled up as he watched Clint carefully. Clint breathed out a sigh of... something. Relief, frustration, joy, _something_.

“Clint,” Phil repeated, and this time he reached out and grabbed Clint’s hands, gripping them tightly and bringing them to rest on his knees. “I made you a promise when I took you from the orphanage; I said I knew it wasn’t much of a choice, that the life I was offering you was only better than the factory dormitories, but that I would take care of you as best I could. I promised before a judge to keep and protect you. I’m going to keep both of those promises.”

“I know,” Clint said, when he realized that Phil was waiting for him to answer. It wasn’t even entirely a lie. He just... he wasn’t quite _certain_.

“Then what is it?” Phil asked, sounding a little strained. “You haven’t--you haven’t left the house for a month and a half. I know that what happened was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault and I would never--”

The way Clint tensed at those words and bit his lip so hard he worried it might bleed must have alerted Phil.

“Oh, _Clint_ ,” Phil said, and for a moment he bowed his head and breathed out an audible sigh. Clint did his level best not to visibly flinch again, and then Phil looked back up at him.

“It _wasn’t_ your fault. God, I... five _years_ with Steve and we didn’t have any children, how could you think I would... it just happens sometimes. I can send a book explaining it all to your tablet if you think that will help make you believe me when I say that _this wasn’t your fault_. Hell, there are probably video instruction manuals, or we can send you to talk to someone, or... he’ll, I’ll bring someone _here_ to talk to you if you don’t want to leave. It’s just biology and shitty luck and...”

Phil dropped Clint’s hands and huffed out another frustrated sigh.

“What do you need me to do to make you believe that it wasn’t your fault?” he asked.

When Clint had been very, very small, long before things had been so terrible between his parents, his father had kept a garden in their tiny back yard. His only good memories of his father were of a crooked-toothed smile and dirt-covered hands while he showed Clint which plants were weeds and which were food. It had brought him a kind of peace, in the days before his drinking became uncontrollable and he stopped apologizing when he hit his family members.

Maybe it would bring Clint a kind of peace, too, to sit and plant things and watch them grow.

For a moment, Clint and Phil sat there, facing each other but unable to meet each other’s eyes. 

Very quietly, Clint asked, “Could I start a garden? I know the porch is really small, but you don’t spend much time there anyway, and I wouldn’t need much space...”

“I--” Phil began immediately, and then stopped. He studied Clint with a mixture of bemusement, interest, and maybe a hint of something very, very fond. “Yes, Clint, of course you can have a garden. What do you need me to get for you?”

Another too-long pause.

“I’ll get it myself,” Clint said. If he was going to start a garden, he was going to have to go outside, one way or another. And... he wanted the garden to be _his_ , not just another gift from Phil.

“Alright,” Phil said, and for the first time in a while, the smile he offered Clint has he turned the television back on was genuine.


	13. Chapter 13

Clint’s first day back at the archery range was a revelation of sorts. Four different people stopped him to say hello and let him know that they’d missed him. A pretty alpha girl about his age crowded a newcomer out of Clint’s usual spot, and then smiled at Clint and motioned for him to take it.

The receptionist he usually saw was at the front desk when he left, and she smiled and greeted him too and said she hoped he was feeling better. Clint almost flinched before he took in her guileless face and realized that, for once in his life, it wasn’t an attack. She didn’t even _know_ , she’d just assumed something bad had happened to keep him away.

He didn’t even have to fake his smile as he thanked her and promised to see her the next day.

At home, his routine with Phil settled into a new shape; Clint went to the archery club almost every day, just as he had before, and bought the groceries and took Phil’s suits to the dry-cleaners and worked out in the tiny home gym. He cooked most nights, but they started ordering take-out more often. Phil started spending time with Clint after dinner, washing up, instead of retreating immediately into his office. Clint started telling Phil about his days again, and Phil started sharing his own office adventures in return.

Phil kindly but firmly wrested laundry duty from Clint, claiming that Clint never quite got the detergent ratio right. Every Saturday he would sit on the floor in the living room to fold their clothes, Clint would perch on the couch behind him, and they would catch up on the shows Phil had missed throughout the week.

Phil, to Clint’s surprise, didn’t even seem to mind that Clint had a bad habit of half-shouting commentary at the characters, even when Clint spoiled the entire plot.

After a couple of weeks, Phil suggested that they go for a run together on a Sunday evening, and it quickly became habit for the two of them to walk or run Sundays and then pick up take-out from one of several hole-in-the-wall diners on their way back. Phil usually had hilarious, snarky things to say about other pedestrians they passed, which complemented Clint’s talent for spotting people doing ridiculous things nicely.

Another heat came and died a swift death thanks to suppressants. Some of the plants in Clint’s new garden boxes started sprouting.

He started hanging around the archery club later in the afternoons, talking to people and making friends for the first time since the orphanage. Sometimes he would go out to lunch with Kate, the pretty alpha who’d saved his spot on the range, or the man who’d confronted him in a bar ages ago, Bucky. He had recognized Clint from the club and decided to say hi, but hadn’t realized quite how creepy it would come off.

Clint didn’t tell them much about his personal life, torn between the desire to keep what little happiness he had to himself and embarrassment that he was in what was essentially a pity marriage designed to fulfill a stupid law. If he didn’t say it aloud, it was easier to pretend that this thing with Phil was real and lasting and every bit as incredible as it felt when they say down to dinner and told each other about their days.

Kate and Bucky seemed to share Clint’s reluctance to talk about their personal lives, which worked out fine. All he knew about Kate was that she was an alpha from a wealthy family and unpartnered. Bucky was a beta, and had joined the archery club mostly for to access to their small gun range; he was some sort of ex-army marksman and apparently didn’t like the stares he got at regular ranges because of his false arm.

The friendship that the three of them struck up existed mostly on the basis of shared interests in marksmanship, good taste in television shows, and a handful of shared sports teams.

Another heat hit, right on schedule, in the middle of the night. Clint groped his way into the bathroom, downed one of the suppressant pills, and went back to sleep.

Clint’s garden boxes progressed, and Clint made a really nice roast chicken with some of the rosemary. The holiday blockbusters started showing, and Clint and Kate and Bucky fell into the habit of going to catch the matinees if they all ran into each other at the range.

Kate started seeing a new guy, and suddenly her entire personal life came spilling out of her, much to Clint and Bucky’s amusement. She was set to inherit the family business over her beta sister, contingent on finding an omega partner and having the requisite two children. At eighteen, she was not particularly worried about that, which stung a little but... Clint had always known that there were lucky people out there, somewhere. He just wasn’t one of them.

Clint, in turn, shared a few of his childhood memories in the circus, carefully skirting around his time in the orphanage and how he had come to be with Phil. He told them about the aged old tigress he had befriended, and the garden he was planting on his porch.

Bucky remained amusingly mysterious. Very fairly, Kate and Clint took to constantly teasing him about how creepy that was.

Clint’s eighth heat hit him when he was having lunch with Bucky. It was early enough that he would have been fine to get home himself, but Bucky insisted on escorting him back to his apartment in the snowy weather. The subway ride was slightly nerve-wracking. It felt like every alpha in the compartment was staring at him, trying to move closer. Clint knew that was just the beginning of the heat haze paranoia, and Bucky only had to bark out a reprimand to one alpha who got too close.

Phil was waiting when Bucky deposited Clint on his doorstep, made sure he could get in alright, and left.

“It’s Thursday,” Clint said, eyebrows drawing down in confusion. “Why are you--”

“Bucky called,” Phil said, immediately. He sounded... strangely breathless.

“Bucky--?” Clint asked, still confused.

“Old friend. He mentioned having met you at his club,” Phil answered, watching Clint intently.

Clint reached back to rub at the base of his neck.

“Um, Phil?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Do you think we could... try again this time? I wanted to ask while I was still, you know--” Clint waves his hands around in a motion that he hopes he conveys that he’s not deep in his heat haze yet, that his judgement is barely compromised if at all. “I just, I want--” Clint cut himself off, unsure how he wanted to finish that sentence.

He’d missed it, the last three heats; the feel of Phil’s hands touching him, the slide of their skin together, the stretch and burn of Phil inside him... he _missed_ all of that, more than he would have expected.

Phil breathed out a sigh and strode up to Clint, pressing him carefully back against the door. His kiss was different from the ones they’d had before; he nipped at Clint’s lips, pressed against them with his tongue until Clint opened his mouth and granted him entrance.

It was the earliest Phil had ever caught the heat. He led Clint back into the bedroom, pressed him down into the mattress, showered every inch of Clint’s skin with kisses. Clint tried to return the favor, resulting in a small wrestling match that left both of them panting and giggling and grinning at each other. The heat grew more intense, reflected in the intent that crept into Phil’s actions, the way he touched and caressed and kissed Clint until he was shaking against him.

“This is nice,” Phil said, as Clint felt the edge of his control begin to fall away. “With the bond... you just got it over with as quickly as possible, at least the first round. But this is... nice.”

Clint bucked up against him and Phil nuzzled into his neck, biting gently at the tendon there.

“Shhhh,” Phil said, and his hand slid down until his fingers breached Clint, stretching him open. Clint whimpered against him, and aimed a kiss at his temple that landed somewhere on his chin instead. Phil chuckled and slipped another finger in, and then another, and then another, and then he was pressing into Clint, pumping against him and breathing in sharp gasps to match.

The cramps came as soon as Phil had finished, before he had even pulled entirely away, but it didn’t seem so bad. It was almost worth it, to be here, lying next to Phil, the man he... loved.

Clint closed his eyes and very, very slowly breathed out.

He did love Phil. He didn’t know when he had stopped thinking of Phil as the man who had saved him from the factory dormitories and started thinking of him as the man he was married to. He loved Phil’s tiny smiles and the way his eyes crinkled when he meant it, he loved the sarcastic comments Phil made when Clint was getting a little too loudly invested in a television show, he loved the way Phil would sometimes hum as he did the dishes and the way he tried so, so hard to take care of Clint even when he didn’t have to.

He wasn’t stupid enough to say something. For one, he had no idea how Phil would react. He’d had love once before and had said himself he didn’t think he could again. And... he knew Phil didn’t love him back, at least not yet. Maybe someday, when they’d been together and they had children and a life, maybe then Phil could finally move on and learn to love Clint despite all his failings, despite the fact that he wasn’t Steve.

Clint could wait.

Phil shifted a little, pressing a kiss into Clint’s shoulder and then moving up to rest his head in the brook of Clint’s neck.

Clint was halfway to a smile when a particularly nasty cramp caught him, and he couldn’t quite stop himself from curling into it and whimpering a little.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck with this, with me,” Phil said into his shoulder, and Clint wanted to say something, say it was fine, he didn’t regret a single second of it, he--but the cramps were rapidly growing worse and the heat haze was closing over him, and he couldn’t make his brain hold still long enough to settle on the words.

The heat was miserable in the way Clint’s heats probably always would be, but Phil stayed with him through it, brought him food and water and slid into him until they were both raw and aching in a way that was only preferable to the heat cramps.

The next month, Phil brought home another little container of pills.

“From the same friend who got me the suppressants,” he told Clint, a little sheepish. “They’ll let me... more often... and as long as I’m only taking them two days out of thirty, which is all you’ll need, no negative side-effects. It won’t be as good as a bond, but it’ll be better than what we have right now.”

Clint stared at him, and then pulled him down. What followed was the best heat of Clint’s life, with minutes of cramps rather than hours and even, with his hormone levels lowered by the amount of sex he was having, short periods of lucidity.

For the first time since he’d started going into heat, Clint didn’t even have to be tied down.

Another just like it followed, and even if they still left him exhausted and aching and watching Phil walk out the door with a funny tilt to his step, it was the happiest Clint could ever remember being.


	14. Chapter 14

As the deadline for them to appear in court and prove that Clint was pregnant so that they could remain together approached, Phil started to stay up later. He made calls that Clint couldn’t quite overhear, no matter how often he contrived to be cleaning the spare bedroom next to Phil’s office. He started leaving for work earlier some mornings, and coming home late others. He always phoned if he was going to miss dinner, but Clint’s subtle wheedling didn’t earn him a single comment that might give away Phil’s whereabouts.

Clint’s eleventh heat came and went, and Phil started bringing extra paperwork home with him, sometimes so much that it overflowed his briefcase and had to be carried in his arms and taken straight to his office when he got home. Even if the non-computerized paperwork hadn’t had a clearly governmental origin, Clint would have recognized the Bureau of Reproduction and Population Control’s stamp on each manila envelope the papers were nestled in.

Clint knew how this went. He knew what the paperwork and the phone calls were for. He knew how this was going to end, and it wasn’t happy, but he’d be damned if he just sat by and let the world fuck him over again.

He pretended he didn’t notice what was going on and spent extra hours every day pouring over Reproduction Act Law until he knew it by heart. Phil was an alpha. He had to have at least two children. There were certain ‘mercy’ loopholes in place regarding bonded pairs, something that probably would have protected Steve and Phil if Steve had lived, but it wouldn’t help Clint stay with Phil. They had no bond to lay claim to, to insist that it would be cruel and unusual to separate them. They would be called before the court in just three months, and if they couldn’t prove that Clint was pregnant and capable of bearing Phil a child by the deadline, they would be separated. There were appeals that could be made, but they had to be filed by the alpha and not a single one had ever been approved by the Bureau.

It took a week to realize that trying to remain Phil’s partner, when there was no guarantee that Clint would get pregnant at all, let alone any time soon, was hopeless. Clint wasn’t going back to the factory dormitories, though, no matter what.

To his surprise, alternatives were easy to find. He just had to convince Phil to take them.

To that end, he waited until Phil left for work one morning and immediately went to the grocery store to pick up supplies. He made sure Phil’s dry-cleaning was done and did the laundry even though it technically wasn’t his job anymore, and he cleaned the apartment until it was spotless. Then he spent the better part of the afternoon making a souped up fancy version of the lasagne and garlic bread he knew Phil really liked and suspected might be Phil’s favorite.

Phil got home from work just in time to watch Clint pull the lasagne out of the oven.

“Oh,” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised. Clint might have been pleased that he’d brightened Phil’s day a bit, if not for the curl of dread coiling in his stomach as he considered the conversation to come.

“Is today something special?” Phil asked, biting his lip a little and with his eyes all crinkled up in a smile.

_God_ , but Clint was so fucked.

“I know for a fact that your birthday isn’t for another three weeks,” Phil added, smiling curiously at him. Clint forced a smile and an innocent shrug.

“Just because,” he said, lightly, and he slipped over to press a kiss against the crinkles at the corner of Phil’s eye. “C’mon, let’s eat.”

Despite his promises to himself that he would be _totally_ cool about this, casual and normal and accepting, Clint could barely bring himself to pick at his food. Phil made his way through his own lasagne steadily, occasionally making noises of satisfaction as he ate. The food on his plate slowly disappeared, and Clint thought he might be sick from nerves. He could spot the exact moment Phil decided something was definitely up in the way the worried crease in Phil’s forehead deepened. Finally, Phil set down his fork and turned to face Clint.

“Clint,” he said, quietly. Clint reached to pick up his plate and start the washing, but Phil stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Clint,” he repeated, gently moving Clint’s arm away from the kitchen bar and maneuvering Clint’s hand so that their fingers were interlaced.

Clint pulled away, hesitantly.

“You know how you talked about having a nanny, if I didn’t want to, you know, take care of any kids we had?” he asked, slowly. Phil nodded, and the crease was suddenly replaced by an alert, hopeful expression.

Clint had to look away.

“I’ve been doing some research. And that’s... that’s an option, you know, alphas hire omegas to do housework or take care of children or whatever. A lot of them live with the alpha and their partner. And I know what you’ve been doing, and I’m sure you haven’t told me because you didn’t want me to worry, but... I understand, okay? I know we’ve only got two heats left, I know that... I mean, I know the law and I know that you have to end the partnership, but... I guess what I’m asking is, please don’t send me away? I can’t go to the factory dormitories, not now, and I know you’re too... kind, good, whatever, I don’t know, the point is I know you’re not going to turn me out on the streets. And I know you don’t have a lot of options there, but _please_. Just let me stay here, with you, I can take care of your kids with your new partner and do housework and cook or whatever--whatever you want. Just don’t turn me out.”

It was a practical solution, Clint hoped. He was biased, obviously, but it was fairly common practice and...

“I’ll take it, um, any way you want it,” he added, “You can spend my heats with me, my other nights as well, or I can just be an employee. Whatever you want, I _promise_ I can be that.”

When he found the courage to look up, Phil was studying him intently.

“Clint,” he began, slowly, quietly, “What do you think all the paperwork and phone calls have been about?”

“Partnership dissolution,” Clint answered, immediately. If he could seem unattached, if he could show Phil that he could be professional no matter what Phil decided...

Phil’s laugh sounded surprised and humorless.

“Oh, Clint,” he said, and he reached up and wrapped a hand around the base of Clint’s skull, pulling him forward until their heads pressed together. “I know not everyone in your life has exactly stuck by you, but I promise that you’re wrong about this. I’m not trying to dissolve our partnership because you’re not pregnant yet, I’m trying to apply for an extension.”

Clint looked up into bright eyes that were centimeters from his own.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly breathless. “I--why? You don’t, you don’t have to. I mean, dissolving it would be really easy since I’m still not...”

“Clint,” Phil said, sounding stern and tired and a little sad. “I _promised to take care of you_.”

Clint heard the message beneath his words: _I care about you. I want to be with you. I want you to stay._

Even if Phil couldn’t say it yet, even if he wasn’t ready for Clint to know and even if he didn’t quite realize it himself, Phil _cared_. Maybe he even loved Clint, a little.

Phil was still talking.

“I’ve been trying for a month now to get together the paperwork and witnesses to file an appeal for extension. It was...” Phil turned his head away, breaking contact. Clint sat back and studied him cautiously. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be a secret,” Phil continued, “I just... didn’t want to get your hopes up.I know you’ve been reading up on it, you left your tablet out a few days ago... I should have told you then. But I guess you know that it’s not a guarantee. Appeals are rarely, rarely granted, and an unbonded couple has never won their case before. But I can’t just not _try_.”

“And if it’s not approved?” Clint asked, his fingers curling up into nervous fists.

For a moment, Phil was silent, and then he said, “Then we’ll consider your plan. I will... I will keep my promise to you, one way or another.”

Clint sighed. He’d thought he’d known what it mean to take scraps of happiness where he could find them before Phil had taken him from the orphanage, but now...

“Clint,” Phil said, his voice quiet and gently and strangely resigned. “I... those aren’t your only options. You can... I know I’m not a good man. I needed something, and so I traded your relative freedom for it. I am not... I’m not even sorry for it, although I think I should be. I know I don’t have a lot to offer you here. I have some friends... if this isn’t what you want, I want you to understand that you have alternatives. It isn’t stay here and be my maid-slash-nanny-whatever-the-hell or go straight to the factory dormitories. I can... maybe I should have offered you this instead of what we have now, but this isn’t all you have to be. I know some people, they could get you to Canada, and then Europe if you want. If you’d rather not go so far, there are certain drugs that you can take that will disguise you as a beta and you could stay here... they’re still in their final testing phases, but they’ll be ready for distribution soon. You could pick the life you wanted, Clint.”

Clint bit his lip, because in a way that was always what he had dreamed of: independence, freedom, hope.

He realized that Phil was offering him that with just a few simple words.

Clint could have turned it down. He had absolutely no doubt that Phil would let him stay there in the guise of a maid-nanny-chef, that they would be together after a fashion. And Clint... when the alternative had been the factory dormitories or a life watching Phil with another partner, helping to raise their children and making their lives run smoothly, it had been no choice at all. But the choice between that and freedom...

This time it was Clint who reached across the gap between their bodies to wrap his fingers around Phil’s. He leaned forward until their heads were once again pressed together.

“Thank you for that,” he said, his lips brushing against Phil’s. “I... I want to stay with you. But if you have to... if we can’t... if I don’t get pregnant, if they don’t grant us the appeal and you have to find someone else... if that happens, I’m going to take you up on your offer. I’ve always wanted to go back to the circus--” Clint chucked, half-broken and miserable, “and maybe someday when we can be on equal footing, I’ll come back and see you, okay? Let you know that I’m alright, that you did the right thing in taking me out of the orphanage, that... that I’m doing okay.”

The grin Clint offered him then felt broken and his eyes felt damp. He could hardly imagine a future without Phil in it. It hadn’t been so long before that they’d both thought they were safe, that Clint had been planning out their life together and their children, and now he’d all but given up hope.

Some stubborn part of him clung to the last two months they had together, to the belief that things _had_ to work out. This, the two of them together, was too _right_ to turn out to have been mere luck or chance, lost in a turn of the wheel.

“Okay,” Phil said, very quietly. He stood and gathered the dishes, taking them into the kitchen to wash. Clint meandered into the living room and flipped through channels until he wanted to smash the television.

They both retreated into their rooms early, and Clint’s sleep was anything but restful.


	15. Chapter 15

Phil filed his appeal for an extension the following week. Dinners and the weekend laundry session were tense for a few days, but the tension was short-lived, as the response arrived in a little less than a week, a generic envelope nearly lost in the rest of the mail. Clint opened it without Phil, unable to wait, and read the cold, prefab rejection it enclosed. Clint’s middle name was spelled wrong, and even the signature of their case worker was printed rather than genuine.

Clint needed a nap. He needed a _thousand_ naps. The constant dread of what was to come, the uncertainty of not knowing how much longer he had with Phil, sat on him like a weight. He was always worried, always tired, and now... well, now he knew where he would be in six months, if nothing else, and it wasn’t his first choice.

He’d be underground somewhere, or in another country, a free man. A free man without Phil to soothe him through his heats and smile at him over dinner and tell stupid jokes about terrible television shows every weekend.

Clint didn’t try to delude himself. He could, and probably would, find someone else after Phil. Love wasn’t a static, irreplaceable thing, and if his life had taught him anything it was that. But no matter who he met or how much he loved them, they wouldn’t smile Phil’s tiny smiles and their eyes wouldn’t crinkle the way his did. They wouldn’t be the person who had decided that if they had to follow the law, they would rescue some orphan they’d never even met from a life in the factory dormitories. They wouldn’t be the man who had soothed Clint through some of the worst moments of his life, who had done everything in his power to make things a little easier for the omega he’d taken on, even though no one would have expected it of him.

He woke up hours later to the sound of Phil opening the front door. For a moment, he considered just lying there pretending he was still asleep, but... he wouldn’t leave Phil to read the news alone, not after all the work Phil had done to try and keep them together. When he pushed open his door, blinking sleep out of his eyes, Phil was already at the kitchen bar reading the letter.

“Hey,” Clint said, trying and failing to keep the sorry out of his voice.

Phil hummed at him, not exactly absently but certainly with distraction.

“Phil,” Clint said, moving closer. Phil continued to ignore him.

“Phil,” he repeated when he had reached his partner’s side. He placed a hand on Phil’s shoulder.

Phil let out a sigh that sounded as if he’d been holding all his hurt and worry and sorrow for the last several months in his chest and was just now releasing it.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” he said, sounding strangely hollow. “I... I don’t know what more I could have done. I tried.”

“It’s fine, Phil. I mean, it’s not fine,” Clint took a deep breath, and continued, “It... I wanted to be with you for the rest of our lives, but obviously that... that probably isn’t going to be a thing that happens.”

Phil’s shoulders sagged.

“Before I appealed for extension, I tried to appeal for us to stay together on the grounds of infertility on my part. I mean, six years, two omegas, and not even a confirmed pregnancy to show for it. I went to all their reviews, filed all their paperwork, let them do the tests, and it was... the count was low but present, and they said the circumstances weren’t sufficient for a stay of separation on the basis of sterility.” Phil sounded tired, and more heartbroken than Clint ever remembered hearing him before. Clint didn’t know what to say. 

A weight settled over the apartment in the days that followed, a mix of exhaustion and dread and sorrow.

Clint went out, but his lunches with Kate and Bucky were quieter now. He didn’t know how to tell them that their friendship was coming to an end, that he’d be gone somewhere trying to make a new life for himself. Instead he tried to savor their jokes and stupid banter, soaked up their friendship and prepared to save it for later, when he would need it.

The day before Clint’s nineteenth birthday passed pretty much like any other, except that he stopped as he passed the jewelry store a block down from where he usually bought their groceries. They’d set up a display of partnership rings in their front window. In the corner was a pair of silver rings, a set, one of which wrapped around the other.

Clint knew why it hadn’t sold. Twinned rings were an old symbol of bad luck, promising that one partner would have to wear both of them sooner rather than later.

He stepped into the shop. A pretty young woman smiled at him, and for a moment Clint considered turning around and leaving.

Phil didn’t wear a ring for Clint at all. They only had a little time left together, and... Clint wanted to leave something of himself with Phil. 

He stepped up to the counter.

“The twinned rings in the window,” he asked, “Would it be possible to get just the one?”

The girl frowned at him. “Why just one?” she asked. Clint wiggled his own hand so that his ring caught in the light.

“Oh,” she said, with a sudden smile of understanding. “You’re already partnered! Are you renewing your vows, or did your partner lose their ring?”

“Lost it,” Clint lied, easily, “He wasn’t wearing it, needed to get it resized, and we lost it in the move.”

“Bigger house?” the girl asked, with a knowing smile. Clint forced an answering smile of his own over the sudden hollow feeling in his chest.

There would be no need for a bigger house.

“So, just one of the rings?”

“Oh, of course!” she said, and she swooped over to the display window to remove the rings. “The tie-in one, or the base?” she asked.

“Tie-in, please,” Clint said. It was a touch more delicate than Clint would normally expect Phil to wear, but Clint could tell just by eyeing the silver base ring that it would fit with the gold ring Phil still wore for Steve.

Something to remember the both of them by, then.

Clint paid with his card and accepted the ring, settled into a velvet box and then wrapped elaborately in tissue paper and placed in a paper sack. Clint took it home and slipped it under his bed, where Phil was unlikely to find it, and then set about making dinner for them.

The rejection cast a nasty cloud over Clint’s birthday and their one-year anniversary. Phil took the day off work and they went to the zoo and then some fancy gardens that Clint quickly regretted having suggested. For one thing, they were boring, and for another he was apparently _very_ allergic to something they were growing there.

The ring sat heavy in Clint’s pocket.

By the time Clint had stopped sneezing and feeling like he was going to throw up, it was late afternoon. Phil took him to the tiny, delicious diner they had visited that first afternoon together, where Phil had explained what he was looking for from Clint and given him the choice to come with him.

Clint shot him a questioning look, and Phil gave him a tiny smile and shrugged in return.

They ate quietly, occasionally knocking feet beneath the table. The hamburger was better than Clint remembered, even with the knowledge that this was the last hanging over his head.

Then again... maybe he could. Clint had every reason to believe that Phil’s ‘friends’ were part of one of several omega rights subversive groups. If went underground, he could probably stay in the area. And while, if all the spy movies Clint had seen were to be believed, it would be too dangerous for him to meet up with Phil on a regular basis... once a year in a tiny diner nobody paid any attention to wouldn’t be a problem, right?

Over slightly-too-melted soft serve, Phil asked, “Do you regret it?”

Clint didn’t even have to pause to consider his answer.

“No,” he said, and this time when he smiled it was full and genuine. “Not a second of it.”

Phil sighed. “Not a second?” he asked.

“No,” Clint repeated, and he very deliberately kicked a little at Phil’s foot beneath the table. “It’s not just that you kept me out of the factory dormitories either, you know, though that helps. I didn’t think... and I guess it was probably stupid of me, with the way this is probably going to end, but you’ve made me believe that maybe not everything is hopeless. Maybe my life won’t always go in the wrong direction, maybe some things can go right for me, after all, and... thank you, for that. Really. I... I love you.”

Clint bit his lip as Phil stared at him, visibly startled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring.

With a heavy, resigned sigh, Clint began, “Look I, I know you don’t feel, um, as strongly as I do, but it’s enough that you care. I thought... I hoped you might, you know, wear this. To remember me by.”

A little desperately, he held out the ring to Phil, staring at it so that he wouldn’t have to see the reaction of the man himself.

When Phil didn’t respond or even reach out to take the ring, Clint continued, “Even if we have to... even if things don’t work out for us, it was worth _every second_ we had together as far as I’m concerned. If I could go back to this place a year ago and if you offered me the same choice I would... I would still take it, Phil. I wouldn’t even pause to think about it.”

Still, Phil remained silent and motionless across from him.

“Phil?” Clint nudged at him again. When he didn’t respond, Clint prodded, “What about you? Do you regret it? Last time we were here, you gave me that choice and said it was mine to make. But you didn’t have a choice at all, did you?”

For a long moment, Phil remained silent. Then he looked up at Clint, eyes heavy and dark with emotion.

“I thought I would,” he finally said, in a voice gravelly with grief. His hand clenched tightly on the table, where it lay between them. Clint set the ring down, reached over and wrapped his own fingers around Phil’s fist. “I didn’t even know you, then. I guess I thought you were just some... I don’t know, punk troublemaker orphan. I thought we’d have two kids in the next couple of years and then you’d more or less go your own way, leave the kids to be raised by me and a nanny or whoever would take them. I thought it would be a fair trade--what little I could give you and freedom from the factory prisons in exchange for what little you would give me.”

“It wasn’t. Enough, I mean. You could have done _so much better_ than me, Clint. Someone who could have bonded with you, who could have given you children and a _life_ and... you could have had more, Clint. And I--” Phil tugged his hand free of Clint’s grasp and looked away again, “--I _still_ can’t bring myself to regret it. You were so much more than I expected. For the first time since Steve, you made me want to _live_ again. You made life _worth_ living. You... thank _you_ for that, Clint. I am so sorry I couldn’t give you what you deserved in exchange.”

Clint huffed out a quiet breath, and then stood. When Phil remained firmly out of reach, he moved around the table and slid into the booth beside Phil.

“You’re forgetting the part where you saved me from a miserable, slow death making scarves for old ladies in some factory and getting used up by shitty alphas,” Clint said, a little too sardonically.

When Phil didn’t respond, he changed his approach.

“So does that mean you’ll take the ring?” Clint asked, waving the ring in front of Phil. Slowly, stiffly, Phil reached out to take the ring and slip it onto his finger, where it locked perfectly around Steve’s gold band.

“I figure we each got the best possible deal out of this,” Clint concluded, a little smug and a little sad. “Isn’t there some old saying or something, better to have--”

“--loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,” Phil finished with him, a small smile creeping back onto his face. “You’re ridiculous, Clint.”

He reached up to brush a finger along Clint’s cheekbone, his touch delicate and his eyes as sad as they had been when Clint had first met him, a year before.

They abandoned their melted ice cream and left the diner. Phil offered to take him out to see a movie, but Clint pointed out that everything was either really questionable romance or horror, and besides, he really wasn’t in the mood for the movies. Phil seemed to agree, and so they drove home and queued up a new history channel drama they’d been meaning to watch instead. Clint found himself lying sideways across the couch, his head in Phil’s lap as Phil ran his fingers through Clint’s hair. They fell asleep that way, wrapped up in each other and trying too hard not to think about the future again.

The weeks that followed were quiet and tense, but also strangely soft. Phil took Clint to his bed, in his tidy room that had none of the lingering reminders of Steve that Clint had expected, and showed Clint what it could be like outside of heat, without the pain and misery of a missing bond. Phil not only came home on time every evening; he often took off work an hour, half an hour early. He lingered in the mornings, kissing Clint breathless in the kitchen. They were inseparable on the weekends, ordering in because they didn’t want to go out and risk sharing each other’s company with other people. 

Clint still went to the archery club and still joined Bucky and Kate for lunch, but less often now; being out of the apartment felt like a sort of betrayal, a misuse of what little time he had there in the home he shared with Phil.

And, slowly, the clock ticked down.


	16. Chapter 16

Two weeks after his birthday, Clint started packing his things. It was slow and heartbreaking work, but he was nearly finished by the time Phil came home three hours early from work. He pushed into the apartment, bright-eyed and panting as if he’d run all the way from the car.

“Phil--?” Clint asked, alarmed.

“Clint, your heat,” Phil said, a little too loud in the quiet apartment. Clint frowned at him, worried now--Phil should know that it wasn’t due for another two weeks, that he would be called in and tested by a doctor soon and the separation would be finalized if he wasn’t pregnant. Phil knew that his last heat had been right around his birthday--

Clint froze.

“Oh my god,” he said.

“Got you a test,” Phil said, shoving a familiar brown paper bag at Clint. Clint grabbed it with shaking hands and stumbled to the bathroom, his knees feeling impossibly weak. He dumped the contents of the bag onto the counter, revealing not one but several tests. It took him several tries to pay enough attention to the directions to comprehend them, but then he was peeing on two of the sticks at once and setting them next to each other on the counter. In the hall, he could hear Phil pacing.

Rather than wait and watch the clock in the cold bathroom, Clint went out to join Phil. He pulled him to the couch in the living room, making careful note of the time so that he could check the tests as soon as the ten minutes were up. Phil curled up there, leaning into Clint, and every once in awhile Clint would hear a barely audible “ _Please_ ,” from him.

The minutes passed too slowly as they took comfort from each other and waited to find out whether they would be spending their future together or alone.

“If it’s negative--” Clint began, about minute five.

Phil silenced him with a kiss.

And then, at minute eight: “What if this is like last time, what if in two weeks--”

“We’ll keep the tests. If we can prove a pregnancy, they pretty much _have_ to give us a five month extension,” Phil interrupted, and when it looked like Clint would argue further, he kissed him again.

“Please,” Phil whispered when he pulled away, breathing into Clint’s forehead and stroking his hair above his ears, “just, all I want is to keep you. _Please_ let this work out.”

Clint leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his collarbone through his shirt, hardly daring to voice his hope.

At minute nine: “Do you think we could check, in case it finished early?” Clint asked.

A pause from Phil.

“I--we probably shouldn’t risk it. Let’s wait, just to make sure.” Clint nodded and buried his face in Phil’s neck.

“Ten minutes,” Phil said, a small eternity later. Clint sprung off the couch and hurried towards the bathroom, Phil just behind him.

p r e g n a n t, the first test read.

Clint shuffled it aside and grabbed the second one.

p r e g n a n t

“Oh my god,” Clint said, faintly. Phil peered over his shoulder, and then settled his head on Clint’s shoulder.

“Thank god,” he echoed. Clint felt hysterical tears welling up, and tried to fight them back.

“Oh my god,” he repeated, on the verge of laughter. Phil chuckled into his back.

“We did it,” he said, sounding close to tears himself. “I get to keep you. Oh my _god_ , Clint.”

His arms sneaked around Clint’s waist, pulling him in close. Clint shifted and turned so that he could return the embrace.

“Love you,” Phil said, breathless and wondering, as if he'd only just realized it himself.

“Love you too,” Clint said, ignoring the dampness on his cheeks and the way they ached from smiling. Phil tugged him back to their bedroom then, where they lay curled around each other. Clint fell asleep almost immediately.

When he woke, it was to the smell of take-out from his favorite Indian place. Phil was in the kitchen, pulling silverware out of the drawer.

“I thought you’d be hungry,” Phil said, hovering adorably between nervousness and excitement. “We can go out if you’d rather?”

“This is perfect,” Clint said, drifting over to the kitchen bar and waiting with an expectant look aimed at Phil. Phil chuckled, and slid his food over to him.

“I thought get we could get a new kitchen table,” he said, absently. “I just never got around to replacing the old one, and it didn’t seem important.”

Clint hummed.

“And the spare room? Are we going to take the baby furniture out of the closet now or wait until we like, paint and stuff? That’s a thing people do right?” Clint asked asked.

Phil laughed and walked around the kitchen bar with his own food. He pressed a kiss against Clint’s forehead.

“They do. But... I thought we might post it for sale online. We could pick out some of our own. What do you think?”

Clint beamed at him.

“Sounds good,” he said, and he dug into his food.

“Clint?” Phil asked later, as they lay together in bed.

“Hm?” Clint asked.

“We’re not naming our baby after anything, unless you really, really want to. I don’t want him or her to have that kind of weight on them.”

“Okay,” Clint said sleepily.

“And we’ll need to see a doctor for confirmation as soon as possible...” Phil continued.

Clint rolled over and threw one of Phil’s small throw pillows in his face.

“Sleeping,” he said. “We’ve got _months_. Sleep now, planning later.” Phil stared at him for a moment with a breathless smile, and then he laughed quietly.

“Goodnight, Clint,” he said, and he pressed a kiss against Clint’s shoulder.

Later, there would be fears and worries and tense, quiet dinners, but for once Clint fell asleep feeling safe and at home.

* * *

**Fin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and commenting and generally being lovely <3
> 
> I plan to take a short break from this universe to work on a few other projects that have been on the backburner, but I expect to start work on the sequel in a couple of weeks and start posting late in May.
> 
> (I also sometimes take prompts on tumblr, so if you just have a _burning desire_ for domestic family scenes, it could happen js. [Here](http://bendingwind.tumblr.com/post/49063494242/a-b-o-with-twins), for example, is the fluff offered up after chapter 15 was originally posted.)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: mention of suicide, implied miscarriage, coersive dub-con, a/b/o hormonal dub-con, implied death of a pregnant character (not Clint), major character death (past), implied rape of off-screen characters. Please keep an eye on this spot, as more may be added later.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Service Spouse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066158) by [IndigoStarblaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoStarblaster/pseuds/IndigoStarblaster)




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